All Those Shadows Almost Killed Your Light
by Angelina Johnson
Summary: Fix-it fic for 8x05 and 8x06. A certain stubborn sellsword won't let the Lannister brothers die without paying him their debts, and eventually their path leads them back towards the woman Jaime never expected to get to see again.
1. chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Hello, hello! Obviously I do not own any of the characters, I'm just a poor, sad soul who's been hurt by Game of Thrones and it's bad writing this year. This story was originally published on AO3, but... I've been on for 2/3 of my life, in the end it felt wrong not to post it here, too.

* * *

Jaime isn't sure _when _he realized that Cersei was a lost cause, but he has known it for quite some time. Perhaps it was when Tommen flung himself from a window and she seemed not to care. Perhaps it was sooner than that. Perhaps it was even after, when he'd realized there was no hope for his 'sweet sister' after all.

But even as he tries to embrace the side of him that is still honorable, still _good _, he cannot get their babe out of his mind. He had thought there was no hope, that there was no way he could keep Cersei alive long enough to save their child…

But she is _winning _.

And the longer he stays in the North, the longer he realizes that this dragon queen they have put their faith in is no better than his mad sister. What hope is there for the world, if the bloody Starks get Aerys's daughter on the throne and let the world burn?

His child, though… maybe if he can save the child, there might be hope for a better future for Westeros.

And if there's not, well, fuck them all. He's given everything he has to protect them and what has it ever gotten him? _Kingslayer, Oathbreaker, man without honor _. Jaime did not make the sacrifices he did, did not live a life so scorned, just to have the people make the same mistakes, putting their trust in the wrong people all over again.

It's not Cersei he's running to, when he vanishes in the middle of the night. It's the child, the one who might be kinder than Joffrey. Braver than Tommen. Who might look at him with love in their eyes, the way that Myrcella had just before she'd passed.

Let Westeros have their queens of fire and ice. Let the whole thing _burn _for all he cares now. There are few that he loves that he leaves behind, but maybe it's worth it, if it's not too late to take his child away from all of this after all.

He cannot sit in the North and pretend at a new life any longer. As blissful as those moments with Brienne were, as much as he aches for that to be his reality… he has unfinished business he must attend to.

* * *

When he is captured by Jon Snow's forces, Jaime is sure that the gig is up. He doesn't know how this will end for everyone else - whether Cersei will see the dragon drop from the sky, whether she will watch her enemies scream while they're engulfed in flames of green, or whether it'll be the dragon queen who takes the city with fire and blood.

He is too tired to care anymore. His life has been a long one, a hard one, where he has walked the line between black and white, good and evil, and has done hateful things in the name of love, dishonorable things in the name of justice. It is too much, too many burdens for one man, and he knows how this ends now.

The Starks will not let him live. Daenerys Targaryen will not let him live. Cersei had wanted him dead, too; it had been a long shot to come here and beg her to protect their child anyway, and now his chances have gone from slim to none.

And then Tyrion enters, and Jaime wonders if it is a dream. Or perhaps death has already taken him, and this is what things look like on the other side.

Only Tyrion is not a vision haunting him. Tyrion is warm and real and _there _, and though he says _much _, there is but one thing that stands out to Jaime.

Growing up, Jaime had been all that Tyrion _had _. Now, Jaime is all that Cersei might have. _He _is the only person who had kept his brother from succumbing to darkness, from dying alone and unloved. And as Tyrion releases him, it's understood - he's the only person that can provide that for Cersei now.

He won't be able to save the baby after all. But despite all the bad, despite what she had become… there had been good in Cersei, once. There had been a bond between them that was battered and bruised, but not fully broken. Jaime knows he will die, knows that she will do the same.

Maybe he was always meant to offer her some peace in her last moments. If their fates are sealed already, maybe he just needs to be that beacon of hope for her one last time.

He doesn't love her, not as he once did. But she is his other half, his _family _, and she is _hated _for the very same acts that some love the dragon queen for.

Life has not been kind to the Lannisters. But as Tyrion unchains him and Jaime treads the familiar path towards Cersei, he thinks that at least they can leave this world being kind to each other.

* * *

The path to Cersei is not an easy one. And Jaime would be a liar if he pretended there were not times along the way where he wanted to close his eyes and transport himself to a place that should have been colder and bleaker, but instead had been filled with warmth.

He can't let that stop him, though. There is no turning back now, and he could not have lived in peace in Winterfell knowing that his child had died and he hadn't even _tried _.

As he lays bleeding out, though, thinking Euron Greyjoy has killed him after all, it's not Cersei's golden blonde hair and wicked emerald eyes that flash before him. It's hair more like straw, and eyes more like sapphires, and soft hands cupping his face and a pained voice urging him to _stay _.

Jaime rolls over, _stay stay stay _echoing in his mind, and grabs Widow's Wail. It's not time to leave this world _yet _.

* * *

Every breath is filled with pain as he leaves Euron behind and pushes forward on his course. His breathing is ragged, his hand is covered in blood when it comes away from his side. But Jaime has come this far. There is nothing waiting for him if he turns around, nothing but fire and blood and more people who want him dead.

Will they want his child dead, too? There is a small sliver of hope, that maybe he can still slip away, vanish the way he entered, appeal to Jon Snow and Sansa Stark and voices of _actual _reason. Prolong his and Cersei's deaths, just long enough to let their child enter the world.

It is a hope that he knows most likely is in vain. But he needs something to cling to, lest he give up before he even reaches his twin.

_Have you ever run away from a fight _? Jaime had asked, on that cold, fateful night. He'd always run to them, always wanted to be in the thick of things, but he promises the gods that if they let him out of here, if they let him get Cersei and his child to safety, that he will run away this time. Run away, and never come back. Never let more blood spill at his hands again.

They're so close. _So _close, and Jaime is so tired. Maybe… maybe he just needs to get Cersei through this path, and then he can have the rest that he so sorely craves. He could lay his life down now, knowing that Brienne was safely in the North, Tyrion was alive outside the gates, and that Cersei was able to flee with his child.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

_Maybe not _. The realization that their path is blocked hits him as heavily as the rubble has hit the underbelly of the Red Keep, and he wants to succumb to despair.

A life _wasted _. Tarnished honor that none but Brienne will ever know the truth of. Humoring Cersei and her cruel whims until things had gotten to this point. Things coming full circle, with him killing a crazed Targaryen to protect the people only to die at the hands of another, no matter how indirect.

Beside him, Cersei breaks. He can see it on her face, the moment that a woman who has showed little softness since the death of their first son crumbles. Instinctively, Jaime wraps her in his arms, the way he has always done.

"Nothing else matters," he tells her, as she sobs for the loss of their child, the loss of their lives… the loss of all she's ever held dear. He says the words less because he believes them, and more because he wants to calm her. What does it matter if they don't ring true the way they used to? Even someone who has done monstrous things deserves peace in the end.

He wants to laugh bitterly at that, but what's the use? He's failed everyone who's ever believed in him. He failed Tyrion by not stopping this before it came to the horrors that flew above. He'd failed Cersei and their child, who he'd been too late to save. He'd failed Brienne, who had put her own honor on the line to promote his.

He'd wished once to die in the arms of the woman he loved. He'd thought it would be like this, here with Cersei, but it's not.

All the same, Jaime clings to her for dear life as more rubble collapses around them. _How I wish that I had just died at Winterfell _, he thinks, and then his world goes black.


	2. chapter 2

Jaime never expects to open his eyes again, so when he does, he thinks he must be in one of the seven hells. He's certainly in enough _pain _for that to be the case; his head throbs, his throat feels thick, and breathing comes with difficulty. There's so much pain that it almost makes the loss of his hand seem like a fond memory.

Jaime tries to get his bearings, but it's hard to focus on this… afterlife, or whatever it is he's entered into. His head aches, his side aches… his _heart_ aches. It's hard to think of much else.

Will death always be like this? Just a constant gloom, where he can do naught but dwell on the sins of his life? On how in his final moments, he'd failed to save his child? And how throughout his _entire _life, he'd never saved Cersei?

He might have protected her, today and most days in his life, but hadn't Jaime failed her so long ago it hardly even mattered? He'd enabled her, let her become the woman that she'd been in the years leading up to her death - and that woman was someone that few would mourn but him.

But why did he keep thinking of _mourning _? He was dead, wasn't he? Maybe the pain would subside and he'd stand up and wander off and meet his sister somewhere here in the seven hells, and then…

A face hovers above him. _Bronn's _face, and Jaime suppose that makes sense, too. Why _wouldn't _he be haunted by the sellsword in hell? The man had been a friend at times, but a right pain in the arse even more often.

"I told you nobody but me gets to kill you," Bronn laughs when he notices Jaime's eyes are open, and that _laugh _is jarring, and out of place… but it's also the first thing that makes him wonder if he's not quite so dead as he'd thought after all.

Jaime's lips part, and he tries to speak, to ask the questions that now ricochet through his mind. They make his head hurt all the more, but he supposes it's slightly better than the immediate pain of waking.

He croaks out a sound, unintelligible, and Bronn laughs again as footsteps shuffle nearby, coming to his side. Then there is Tyrion, _warm and real Tyrion again _, and he's tipping a skin of water into Jaime's mouth and the ache in his throat subsides.

All the other aches are still there, his side and his head and his heart, _always his heart _, but at least he can speak. He ignores Bronn's quip from before, instead focusing on his brother, with worry lines etched in his forehead and a hollowness in his eyes that can only mean he's a man who has just witnessed unfathomable horror.

"Are we all dead, then?" Jaime asks weakly, and Tyrion's lips quirk slightly, for the briefest of seconds. Then it's gone, and the heaviness is back - but the almost smile was enough to make Jaime question the reality of his situation _again _.

"You fuckers best stay alive until _I _decide I'm done with you," Bronn answers, and it doesn't make sense. Jaime had ridden south on a _suicide _mission. He'd had knives thrust into him, he'd had rocks tumble over him, and surely if that hadn't done the trick, that _awful _dragonfire would have found him eventually. After all, in the moments before he'd found Cersei, he'd taken time to notice Aerys's daughter had begun to torch every inch of King's Landing she could reach.

Jaime just continues to blink at them in bewilderment. Where _are _they? King's Landing is ashes, Daenerys Targaryen is mad, Tyrion and Jaime have both betrayed her, why the _bloody _hell is Bronn here? None of it makes sense, and yet…

_How do you know there is an after? _

Since Bran Stark had said those words to Jaime, he had assumed he was slated to die. That he was living on borrowed time. Yet somehow, inexplicably, he seems to still be here.

Tyrion finally starts to speak, to explain where they are and how he's come to be here… and Jaime realizes that he must not be done borrowing time after all.

* * *

It's much to process. The colossal loss, the assumption that Tyrion burned with the city, the Dragon Queen departing for Dragonstone instead of staying in the city she has just sacked… It makes even less sense to Jaime than the fact that he is alive, that Bronn and Tyrion had come looking for him and Cersei and had managed to pull him out of the rubble in time.

His sister has not been so lucky, and Jaime's stomach turns at the thought of her alone underneath the rocks, their child crushed with her. _I was supposed to die with her _, he thinks bitterly. _I should have died, not them _.

Jaime was already far from the Knight he'd once been before the events of today, and now he is battered, bruised, still occasionally bleeding…

They should have left him there. They should have let him die a slow, painful death under the rocks. For all his sins, it would have been what he deserved.

But Bronn's blathering about castles, and Tyrion's telling Jaime that he's a _good man _, and it reminds him of Brienne, and he hates himself a little more for wondering if this means now, he might get to see her again.

The body of his sister and child are probably barely cold, and his mind has already drifted to the stolen moments of happiness he never should have allowed himself to have. It makes him think of the woman he hurt, the one he does not deserve the forgiveness of.

His selfish thoughts only serve to make Jaime more sure that death is the fate that should have been handed to him, that he's not worthy of walking among the living.

But then he rubs his eyes, blurred from the smoke still billowing from the ashes of King's Landing, and Jaime remembers seeing Daenerys do what he'd stopped Aerys from doing all those years ago. Maybe _living _is the worse hell after all.

"We have to leave here," Tyrion urges. "There's nothing that can be done now. Escape to Essos, Pentos… somewhere far away."

It's not like his brother to run away. He's not Jaime, not fool-hardily running _into _battles he cannot hope to win, but Tyrion's never been one to give up in the face of an impossible situation, either.

Then Jaime sees Tyrion's sorrowful eyes, and he thinks maybe it isn't the fight he's running from. Maybe it's the _shame _. He'd believed in the Dragon Queen, he'd aided and abetted her, he'd brought here here, and now…

Jaime reaches out his good hand, aching and sore and covered in blood that still hasn't been washed off, and he squeezes his brother in what he hopes is reassurance. He's not sure he's ever related to Tyrion as much as he does right now.

They've both let mad queens rise; they've both had times full of the best intentions with the worst of outcomes.

Maybe Jaime should give Tyrion the peace that he craves. Help him go far from here, start a new life, forget the people of Westeros who had never loved him anyway…

But Jaime remembers how it ate him alive, trying to leave the monster _he'd _created. Tyrion will never really be at ease, not as long as the dragon queen lives. Essos and Pentos and anonymity won't fix this.

There is _one _place they can go, though, where perhaps they will find a way to stand a chance.

"Winterfell," Jaime utters hoarsely.

It takes Tyrion a moment to process what he has just said. When he does, his eyes go wide, as if he cannot believe that Jaime has really said such a thing at all.

"You're a _fool _," Tyrion finally says in disbelief, and maybe he is. It's a world away, he's in no shape to ride, and they're but three men, easy enough to be swallowed whole by that dragon of Daenerys's should they cross her path.

And that's to say _nothing _of the unwelcomeness he's sure to experience if they even make it _there _, after the way he's departed. He can already picture it - Sansa's judgment, Bran's hollow stare, Brienne's stricken look. Hells, he's sure he'd even be spurned by _Podrick_.

And yet, Jaime has never been more sure of anything in his life.

"We have to go to Winterfell."

* * *

Bronn is easy enough to convince. The dragon queen would sooner _burn _his castle than give it to him, so he decides that Sansa Stark is his last great hope for getting what he deserves.

Tyrion is harder. Winterfell's already been half-burned to the ground, their armies are in the South with half of the remaining Starks, and Sansa's not like to welcome Jaime under her roof a second time. In the end, though, where _else_ is there for them to go?

War is sure to come to the North a second time, and so bloody _what _if they die fighting? They've all cheated death already; it's about time it claims them for real. And what use is a life if they'll always just regret never trying?

Jaime has enough regrets to drown in already. In fact, if he pauses their plans, if he stops thinking about what to do going _forward _, he'll only look back, and Brienne and Cersei and his four children and Bran Stark and god knows who else he's hurt, they will stare him down, will close in on him like regret personified.

He can't bear to run away and try to live with even _more _regrets.

All he can do now is get some rest and hope the regrets don't seep into his dreams.

In the morning, they will ride for Winterfell. Jaime will run towards a fight _one _last time. He's sure the gods won't spare him again, but perhaps before then he'll make right at least one of his wrongs.

Perhaps this time, maybe, he'll get to _actually _die in the arms of the woman he loves.


	3. chapter 3

These rides between King's Landing and Winterfell seem to get longer and longer each time, although Jaime knows the distance is the same. It's him that's changed; each time he's less sure of his purpose than the last, each time he's more tired and battle weary.

At least on this particular trip, he's half-asleep most of the time. Bronn and Tyrion have tied him onto his horse, and as he drifts in and out, he thinks that this was almost nicer the time he lost his hand. At least then he had Brienne, strong and sturdy and so _warm _.

Now, he's got a depressed Tyrion, a bitching Bronn, and his own battered body and broken mind to contend with, with nothing to distract him.

At least, not until they've camped off the beaten path one night and Arya _bloody _Stark sneaks up on them.

"I could have killed you all if I'd wanted to," she says offhandedly as she ties her white horse to a tree and sits on a log beside Jaime. She _had _been rather quiet, coming up on them nearly out of nowhere, but he doesn't know how much of that is her assassin training and how much of that is the noise in his own mind.

_No Cersei. No baby. No place to go where anyone will want to see him. No honor, perhaps for real this time. Not even Brienne could have faith in him after the way he left. _

It's all the same thoughts, worded in different ways, that keep echoing, echoing, echoing, and perhaps Arya Stark is a welcome distraction after all, even if she loves to remind him that she was only in King's Landing in the first place to kill the very same sister he'd been hellbent on saving.

"Wish you could have gotten to her sooner, then," Jaime finally says, and the words taste bitter on his tongue. She'd died anyway, despite his best efforts to save her _child _if not her. Why _not _wish that Arya could have ended it all quickly, before Daenerys had a chance to let the city burn?

"I wanted to stay and kill Jon's queen, too," Arya admits, although this statement is more directed at Tyrion than at Jaime. The Stark girl certainly doesn't like to make people around her feel _comfortable _, and Jaime thinks he might respect that, actually. The brothers have both made horrible choices, enabled horrible people. He thinks that having it sugarcoated would feel worse than her matter-of-fact reminders.

"You really think she's his queen after all of this?" Tyrion scoffs. The bitterness sounds just like Jaime's, and despite everything, he takes small comfort in the fact that perhaps he and Tyrion are more alike than Cersei ever let him think. His sister had told him over and over that _they _were two halves of a whole, that there was no one else like them, but… well, he's always gotten on well with Tyrion, and it seems their years apart have given them more in common rather than less.

"He said she's _everyone's _queen now," Arya spat, and Tyrion seems appalled. He'd snuck away from Daenerys the second that he could, at the first sign of such atrocities. He just assumes that a man of honor like the Bastard of Winterfell, or the Warden of the North, or whatever the hell title Jon Snow goes by these days, will follow suit.

Jaime, though, thinks he might understand Jon a bit better. After all, he'd stayed with Cersei, hadn't he? After she'd blown up the Sept of Baelor? He'd killed Aerys to prevent the very same crime, and yet when it was his own twin, the woman he'd thought he'd loved for as long as he could remember…

Well, that was more complicated. He supposed whatever Jon Snow was feeling when he sent his sister away, down the path that would cross with theirs, must have been complicated, too.

Jaime thinks he might pity Jon Snow in this moment even more than he pities himself. At least Jaime feels like he _deserves _the troubles that have befallen him.

And he's sure, in his heart of hearts, that he doesn't have anyone left in the world who will try to change his mind about what he deserves.

* * *

It's Arya's turn to take watch, but Jaime's injuries still ail him, and he sits up beside her instead of tossing and turning and making his aches flare up more.

"Countryside's been quiet," he comments, although the silence hadn't been as awkward as he would have anticipated. Jaime's not sure why he feels the need to break it, except that perhaps it's not the quiet between himself and one of the Stark sisters that's got him on edge. It's the quiet all around, the lack of people everywhere - he thinks it must be like this in King's Landing now, with the whole population dead at the Dragon Queen's hand.

It's as if Arya plucks the thoughts right out of his brain, though. "It was like this when I left. It'll be like this everywhere, if she gets her way."

Jaime shudders at the thought. He almost wants to go back - he's a dead man anyway, isn't he? He's already a kingslayer, he could go back, sacrifice himself to slay a queen who doesn't deserve her crown… He thinks it might be a better ending for him than seeing the disappointment on Brienne's face when he tries to return to Winterfell.

But going North had been _his idea _in the first place. And if even the deadly girl beside him doesn't think she should stay behind to have her turn at a Mad Targaryen, then what use is he, when he's not the fighter he'd once been?

"Do you think your brother can stop her from raining fire down on Winterfell?" Jaime asks her, not really expecting an answer. He may have helped protect the Stark girls through Brienne, but he's not exactly their favorite person, even if he and Arya have found themselves as unlikely traveling companions.

She gives him this queer look, like she wants to tell him something then doesn't. In the end, all she says is, "No. But he did want me there, to protect Sansa as long as I can. To at least _try _."

"She's got Ser Brienne," he replies, and it's only with great effort that he doesn't add a snide comment about how he can't see why anyone would need _Arya _when they have the best that the land has to offer already. But insulting this girl whose home he's headed towards isn't productive, and besides, she's flashing him a _different _sort of queer look now, and _fuck it all _, trying to figure her out's starting to make his head hurt and he thinks he may as well try to sleep again already.

He's just about to, too, when the girl actually _replies_.

"I left someone behind, too," Arya murmurs, catching him off guard _again _. She's disarming, all tiny and fiery one minute then quiet and practically peering into his soul the next.

"Did you?" Jaime counters, because he'd never really paid attention to her. He hadn't paid attention to much else in Winterfell, really, besides his brother and Brienne, and perhaps Lannister family loyalty should make him feel ashamed that he paid more attention to the latter than the former, but…

Well, there are hardly any bloody Lannisters left to _care _. Jaime's spent his whole life trying to follow so many damn codes - the code of a knight, the code of a Kingsguard, the code of a Lannister - and they've always clashed with one another. It's only when he really follows his _own _code that he feels right, but he doesn't even know what's his and what's not anymore. Cersei's voice is fading as the days pass, but it's still there, calling on him to think just like her, just like his _other half _whenever he starts to find the version of him that knows how to do this without her again.

Things that are his own, that are just _Jaime's _, are sometimes as buried as his sister was beneath the rubble of the Red Keep.

Brienne, he thinks, might have been one of those things, though. She might have been something that was _his _for the rest of his days, if his child and his sense of duty and the nagging voice of his twin in his head and the restlessness in his bones hadn't compelled him to _leave _. Hadn't begged him to do _something _besides stay and live in a bliss he didn't deserve.

He wonders how she is now. If she dwells on what they had, or if she's forgotten him easily. If she thinks of him and wonders about his safety, or if she steers clear of thoughts of him at all. If she _does _wonder about his fate, maybe she wishes that Jaime has gone and died already. He certainly couldn't blame Brienne if she _did _want that.

That's not her, though. That sounds more like Cersei, to wish for him to be dead rather than to not be by her side, and he just…

The more miles they travel, the more he doesn't mourn for her. The child, yes, _his _child, but his sister was lost to him long ago. She's not here to affect him anymore, and Jaime wonders if maybe someday he'll really and truly stop letting her.

Arya Stark lets Jaime lose himself in his thoughts, and when he finally seems to snap back out of it, when the hollow, far-off look in his eyes refocuses on her, she tells him stories of her travels with Gendry Waters until he drifts off to sleep at last.

* * *

The four of them spend long days on horseback, trying to make up for the time they're losing by traveling away from the Kingsroad with tiresome hours and precious little sleep. Jaime still dozes on his horse more often than not, still weaker than he cares to admit, but he's more alert than he was, those first days when he barely even believed he was alive.

Every raven that passes overhead makes him curious. What is happening in King's Landing? What is the Dragon Queen ruling over, with all the people in her Capitol dead and her Keep and all the buildings surrounding it burned?

Jaime is on edge, wondering what they've left the kingdom to, and it's funny, that these thoughts are flooding back _now _. He'd told Tyrion that he never cared for anyone, not even for the innocents, and yet here he is, curiosity creeping in even though they've left behind no one that he loves.

Maybe it was all just a lie. Another Cersei-ism, creeping in and replacing whatever Jaime might have thought and felt for himself. _Seven hells _, is this what the rest of his life is going to be like? Second-guessing everything he thinks and feels, wondering what of it was really him and what was his sister, whispering in his ear, seeping into his mind?

At least she's not the only voice in there, though. Jaime assumes the worst for when he returns to Winterfell and comes face to face with Brienne again, but he'll always remember the way she called him _Ser _, the way she defended his honor. The way she'd reminded him who he really _was _, or at least who he'd once _wanted _to be.

He cares about people. His brother does, too. It's why when they make camp again, Tyrion stays up on watch, wondering not for the first time where he went wrong. As Jaime teeters on the edge of sleep, he whispers, "There was nothing else you could have done."

_Just like there was nothing else he could have done for Cersei _.

He falls asleep with those words in his mind, and Jaime thinks he has the most peaceful sleep he's had since back in Winterfell, back in Brienne's arms.

* * *

They've been on the road for what feels like an _eternity _now, though Jaime knows it's only been weeks. The days have continued to pass more or less the same, though with each one, Jaime gets a bit stronger - physically, if not emotionally.

With each mile they put between them and King's Landing, his grief and his guilt over his twin dying while he survived grow less, but the looming moment where he'll see Brienne again twists knots in his stomach. So does the thought of what the Dragon Queen might have done to the rest of the kingdom by now, but that's beyond their control for now.

By days, they ride. By nights, they keep watch while the others sleep, with nothing but the quiet and the occasional howling of wolves. Once or twice, Arya disappears to see them, coming back muttering about _Nymeria _and how the pack will keep her safe. Maybe Jaime should think it odd, but hadn't they just spent weeks in the company of a madwoman with _dragons _? He thinks that maybe the younger Stark and her bloody direwolf are normal in comparison.

Still, what is it with the Starks and Targaryens taking their house animals so _seriously _? No one's ever given Jaime a _lion _, he thinks, and he almost smiles at that. The action is so unfamiliar at this point that it hurts his cheeks. The smile doesn't last for long, though. No time for japing about pet lions when there are people who may want to try him _again_ in the castle that lies ahead.

The path starts to look more and more familiar, and Jaime _knows _they're nearly at Winterfell now. He thinks that he's strong now, at least strong enough to stay awake until then, but instead, he's exhausted himself with his own worrying, and his eyes slipped closed again.

Cersei's voice, the one that he'd _thought _had been fading, is back, haunting his dreams. Scoffing at him for coming back to this cold, barren wasteland. Mocking him for daring to love someone who isn't her. Then she's accusing him, asking how he could have let her and their baby die, asking how dare he live on without her, and it's just… too much.

There's the other voice in his dreams, too, though. The voice reminding him he must _live _, that he needn't _die _with Cersei, and that's the voice that he's clinging to when his eyes snap open again.

Winterfell is _finally _in sight, and Arya Stark casts one more of her piercing stares in his direction before she kicks her horse to go faster, eager to get back to her family.

In spite of himself, Jaime does the same, until they're knocking at the gates of the castle. There are long seconds of no response, and Jaime's nerves are wrecked, worried they'll be turned away.

Which is _absurd _, because they're with Arya Stark, of course they won't be turned away, but… he doesn't know what waits for him inside as a voice finally calls out from inside, "Open the gates!"


	4. chapter 4

Bran Stark's voice wasn't the one that commanded the gates be open, but it is the first one Jaime hears when they actually enter Winterfell's walls.

"I had hoped you'd be back," he says in that eerie voice of his, and if Jaime weren't so utterly exhausted form the ride to Winterfell, he might have scoffed. Doesn't this _thing _that Bran Stark has become see everything before it happens? Doesn't he already know how it will all turn out?

Jaime supposes the vagueness is nothing new, though. _How do you know there is an after? _That was what Bran had asked him last time, and Jaime had taken it as more proof that he was always meant to die when Cersei did. That his twin was right, he was an extension of her, and that if he couldn't save her and their child, then he was fated to die with her.

Jaime looks his way, and he's not sure how to feel about the fact that Bran's staring directly at him. Not at Tyrion, not at Bronn, not even at his own bloody sister - he only has eyes for the man who had pushed him out of a window and supposedly set his path towards becoming the _thing _he is today.

Still, Jaime supposes that it's less jarring than _last _time. Then, he'd walked into Winterfell wondering what manner of deaths awaited him. Would he be stabbed in the back, the way he'd stabbed Aerys? Flung from a tower, the way he'd flung Bran? Perhaps they'd have seen him beheaded, the same way Ned Stark had been beheaded by his bastard son. Maybe the Dragon Queen would have burned him alive, comeuppance for not stopping Cersei from lighting the Sept of Baelor up with wildfire.

None of those things had happened then, and though Jaime knows that he's not going to receive a _warm _welcome at Winterfell, he doesn't expect to be executed on the spot, at least. It's not _quite _so reckless to show up as it was the last time, and so, he averts his gaze from Bran and looks around the rest of the courtyard instead.

It's not fair, for his eyes to seek out Brienne the way that they do. He doesn't deserve to gaze upon her after the way he'd left her, but once he spots her, he's not entirely sure he'll be able to tear his eyes away from her, either. Jaime looks towards where swords had been clanging just moments ago, but he doesn't see her straw-blonde head towering above the shoulders, nor her broad shoulders and piercing blue eyes, always finding a way to make the rest of the crowd fade away when they stand among them. Or at least, most else fades away for _Jaime_, but from what she's confessed to him before, others don't have his same good taste where she's concerned.

For a brief moment, he worries that something has happened to her. Had she been banished from Lady Stark's service, for being foolish enough to trust him? Or had _she _been the foolish one, and followed him to the death and destruction that had waited in King's Landing?

Then, he sees a young boy run back to the training yard, lining up all out of breath, assembled just in time for the castle doors to open and for Sansa Stark to emerge. Jaime's gaze goes right past the Lady of Winterfell, to the people flanking her: Podrick and Brienne.

Jaime lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. She's _here _, she's real and whole and _fine _. Or at least, outwardly fine. A part of him hopes that he wasn't all that important to her after all - Cersei had seemed to think he was flawed, even useless, readily enough. It's strange that he hopes maybe Brienne felt the same way, that she had no want or need for him, and that his departure hadn't hurt her the same way leaving had hurt him.

The selfish part of him, though, the part that knows how deeply he still cares about her... that part hopes that she's felt something a little less cool and detached.

Jaime was right to surmise that he wouldn't be able to look away from her. She surveys the courtyard, surveys present company, and he thinks he sees a brief flash of surprise when she catches sight of him. Her gaze stays steady, but her eyes linger for half a second longer on him than they'd lingered on anyone else.

Jaime swallows hard. He respects how put together she is, but in the same breath wishes she'd done more to reveal what she truly felt.

And then Jaime's musings are lost, as Sansa Stark abandons the decorum he's come to expect from her - the decorum her sworn sword is still displaying - and flings herself forward, rushing into her sister's arms.

He'd been so captivated by the sight of Brienne that he hadn't even noticed Arya Stark dismount her horse. Sansa is clinging to her for dear life, and despite all Arya's bravado on their long ride North, the younger Stark is clinging back.

Jaime remembers them when they were young, when they'd bickered and scowled and done whatever they could to keep away from each other. They were still different as night and day, but there was a love evident there that hadn't been present when they were children. The way they were acting, they could certainly give even the Lannisters a run for their money when it came to family loyalty.

_Loyalty _, Jaime thought bitterly. He'd had the right of it when he'd listened to Brienne and _fucked _loyalty the first time. But even as he regretted the outcome of his actions, the people he'd hurt along the way… he knew deep down that he couldn't have lived with himself if he hadn't tried, either.

_Dying would have been easier _, he thinks as he looks towards his other companions. He's too preoccupied trying to get his bearings to even realize that it's at least his own voice saying he should have died this time, when half the journey here the voice saying he deserved to be dead had been Cersei's.

Bronn and Tyrion's feet have hit the ground as well, and Jaime wobbles slightly as he tries to join them. He's tired, so tired, his wounds aren't fully healed - it had been the thought of Winterfell and who waited for them here that had kept his adrenaline running and his body moving forward, but now he can't seem to find his strength anymore.

He looks expectantly at Bronn - humiliating as it would be to have the sellsword help him down, Jaime thinks it might be _slightly _more dignified than toppling off his horse entirely and finding himself on the ground.

Bronn smirks, watching Jaime cling onto the horse's mane with his good hand. "I'm not doing shit for either of you boys until I get my castle," he shrugs, and Tyrion at least has the decency to look apologetic about the fact that he's powerless to help.

The Stark girls are still embracing, having folded their brother into their arms as well, but Podrick and Brienne seem to have noticed that Jaime is the only one still mounted. He doesn't have the energy to play it off - his charming golden lion days are behind him, and now he's just a broken, greying man, one who's seen too many horrors and felt too much pain. He sighs, finally starting to swing his leg over the horse and resigning himself to the fact that his knees will buckle underneath him the minute he hits the ground.

Only Brienne takes mercy on him, mercy he cannot possibly deserve, and she is there, one arm around his waist, keeping him upright. For a minute he wonders if he's fallen asleep on the horse again, because he can't imagine how she can bear to even _look _at him, much less touch him… and yet, she is helping, guiding him to a bench where he can sit while Podrick takes the reigns of his horse for him.

The warmth of her arm is like coming to a home Jaime forgot he _had _, and selfishly, he doesn't want the contact to end. The North has warmed up since he left, but it's still so _bloody _cold, and he's still so weak from all the injuries he's sustained. And she's _Brienne _\- her arms are less familiar than Cersei's, but they're more comforting. They _fit _, he remembers in blazing colors just how well they fit around him, and he leans into her even as she is easing him into his seat and stepping back from him.

He wants to think that that won't be the last time he ever feels her touch. After all, no matter how many times they've come and gone, no matter how many partings they've endured, they always find a way back to each other.

This time, though, Jaime has convinced himself it will not be the same. He needs to stop letting flickers of hope into the darkness that is inside of him.

After all… the last time he'd felt a flicker of hope, he'd thought he could protect his unborn child in King's Landing, and the gods knew how well that had turned out. No parent should ever have to outlive their children, yet here Jaime was, having outlived _four _.

His thoughts go from the babe, to Tommen. Bran Stark's age, but where Bran had stopped feeling, Tommen had felt too much. The youngest child to see the light of day had felt so much he'd jumped right out a bloody window.

He glances towards Arya - close to Myrcella's age, but opposite in every way. Myrcella had been soft, girlish, brimming with hope and romantic notions. She'd died in his arms, as Joffrey had died in Cersei's.

The thought of his eldest son makes him shudder slightly. So twisted, so cruel. He hadn't understood then where his son had gotten it, but the more time passed, the more he watched his sister cave in on herself and resort to things such as _wildfire _…

Well, maybe Joffrey shouldn't have surprised him so much after all.

The memories of his children fade as the children in _front _of him finally break from each other, the Lady of Winterfell turning to finally pay their other guests mind. Sansa spares curt nods for Jaime and Bronn; it's Tyrion who's on the receiving end of her coldness, and Jaime finds that getting a warmer welcome than his brother gives him no pleasure.

"Ravens from King's Landing brought us rumors that you both were dead," Sansa says, arching an eyebrow at the brothers. "Even if you weren't, I can't say I expected to see either of you back _here _."

Her voice _sounds _cold, but Jaime's not sure it actually is. Calculating, more like. Sizing them up to see whether they are friend or foe.

He's too tired for the games. Too tired for the _damned politics _of it all.

"Will you be putting us on trial, Lady Stark?" Jaime asks, the first coherent words he's formed since entering the gates of Winterfell.

"And what reason would I have to do that?" she asks. "You weren't a _prisoner _here, Ser Jaime. It's not as though you escaped from me and have been dragged back to be judged for your crimes. You were a guest; you could choose to leave, and you did."

It's not the response Jaime is expecting. After all, the second he'd set foot near King's Landing, it was as if his service to the North had been forgotten completely. He'd been taken prisoner without even a chance to explain. For all the bloody dragon queen knew, he could have been coming to aid their cause, yet she'd locked him away without so much as a single question.

Sansa Stark is _fair _, Jaime realizes. He's been sizing her up for weeks, and the more he sees, the more he's amazed that someone who has suffered so much before his very eyes has come out… well, like _this _. He wonders briefly why Jon Snow put the Dragon Queen forth for the Iron Throne when he thinks the best possible ruler for Westeros might be standing right in front of him.

But that's not important now. His eyes flick from Sansa to Brienne, and her eyes are downcast. The reminder of his choice is like a punch in the gut to _him _; Jaime can only imagine how it must feel to her.

"It was a bad choice," Jaime croaks weakly, but none of them seem to want to listen. Brienne is clutching Oathkeeper at her side, her knuckles practically white from how hard she is gripping it, and he wonders if it's because of him or if it's because of the way her lady's voice turns almost venomous as she rounds on Tyrion.

"_ You _, however, I am less sure of. I can understand why he's here; his Queen is dead, there's nothing left for him now. But _your _queen is alive - unlike the people of King's Landing," Sansa says, and Jaime watches her at this. She'd been the one warning against Daenerys from the start, and she holds her head high and keeps her words even. Yet Jaime sees the way her lip wobbles slightly, like it pains her to imagine the rubble they'd left behind.

King's Landing had been a _hell _for her, and yet he can tell Sansa Stark mourns for them. Daenerys Targaryen had never even laid eyes on the people, never spoken to them… and she'd burned them all to ash.

Jaime's almost glad then for the haunted look that had been on Brienne's face when he'd left her behind here. Between that and the memory of rubble caving in on him, the knowledge of Cersei and his child being left behind while Jaime had been pulled free… well, those nightmares had distracted him from ones of mad Targaryens and the fire and blood that surrounded them.

"She's everyone's queen now," Arya informs Sansa in her best imitation of Jon Snow. The younger Stark had told Jaime of her brothers words when they'd stayed up keeping watch - she'd told him more things than he'd ever expected her to, really, and he had a feeling he'd barely scratched the surface on the mystery that was Arya Stark.

Too bad her sister seemed like to turn Tyrion away right now, and Jaime'd have no choice but to go with him wherever he was sent. And for all that he bloody _hated _the North?

It actually stung, the idea of leaving and not ever seeing the people here again. Arya, Pod… and Brienne. Always Brienne.

"Not mine. Not anymore," Tyrion assures them, and Sansa's shackles are still clearly raised, but she finally relents and says, "Then I suppose I should prepare rooms for you all. Any enemy of Daenerys Targaryen is welcome in the halls of Winterfell."

* * *

Before they retreat to their rooms, they sit down to a terse meal together. Jaime finds himself seated next to Arya; Brienne has very pointedly taken a seat as far away from Jaime as she can.

"Bet your blacksmith would at least look at you," he mutters under his breath to the Stark girl, and her eyes light up teasingly.

"She'll look at you," Arya whispers back as Sansa takes over the conversation, asking for news of what they have all seen and informing them of what _Bran _has seen, as well.

"Daenerys will be coming for us," Sansa tells them, "So if you came to Winterfell to be _safe _…"

"Nowhere's safe, as long as she reigns," Jaime interrupts her. It's come as no surprise to hear that the Dragon Queen sees Sansa as a threat still, not after the poise she's displayed today. Men would raise their banners for this woman, they'd _die _for her - and the Dragon Queen would likely burn them alive like he'd done Cersei's army.

But maybe she _wouldn't _. The uncertainty was probably eating her alive, the same way Jaime had watched even the smallest of threats eat at Aerys all those years ago.

"I suppose not. But it's not _you _I was worried about - after all, you do have a knack for heading where you're most likely to die," Sansa replies coolly.

Even the food that they've been given hasn't restored Jaime's energy. He's too tired to protest, and instead lets the conversation carry on without interrupting again.

Occasionally, Arya mutters things to him. Brienne, at the other end of the table, speaks only when her Lady bids her to. Tyrion's also unusually quiet, humbled by the mistakes he's made and by the fact that Sansa Stark isn't like to let him forget them anytime soon.

Once the Lady of Winterfell has gathered all the information she feels she needs, though, the conversation is dominated by Podrick, ever trying to be pleasant, ever determined to mediate, and _Bronn _. He has no shame, talking about how he'd been willing to kill Jaime and Tyrion at Cersei's behest, and if Sansa wants him to do the same, all she has to give him is some Northern castle or another.

"I hear Bear Island's vacant now. It's no Highgarden, but I'm sure _Her Grace _will have burned that down by now anyway, so I'll take what I can get," he says loudly, and Jaime does his best to tune him out. He doesn't know how Bronn can jest and be merry when Jaime feels like he's only known how to be miserable for weeks and weeks on end now. Even back in the same room as the woman he loves, the one person who'd brought him joy before, he still feels sullen and weak and miserable, and when the meal is cleared, he feels as if it couldn't have come too soon.

"I'd help get you to your room, but you're a heavy old lump," Arya teases him as Sansa tells Tyrion he can have his 'former quarters' and he's 'welcome to show himself to them' while she leads Bronn to wherever it is he will stay. Podrick and Brienne have risen to follow, but Arya has spoken loudly enough for Brienne to hear, and she halts in her place.

She just can't stop saving him, can she? Even when she can't bear to look at Jaime, she won't leave the room when he's looking near helpless, and he can see the look of resignation on her face as she says, "Pod, go with Lady Sansa," and sends her squire to make sure Bronn doesn't try any funny business instead of doing so herself.

"I can escort you to your room, Ser," she informs him. Jaime's mouth hangs open slightly, and he doesn't know if it's because Brienne is finally addressing him directly, or if it's simply because _Ser _is like a punch to the gut after all the more _intimate _forms of address they'd shared when he'd last been here, even if the respect in the title is better than he deserves.

"Jaime," he says to her out of habit. She opens her mouth to protest, but as glad as he is that she's not avoiding him for the time being, he doesn't want to hear her voice all guarded and walled off from him like that again. The formality is stifling. "Knights serve someone, or something. I'm hardly a knight anymore."

Brienne's walk is stiff as she guides him through the halls of Winterfell, her arm around him for support as it had been earlier. She doesn't respond directly to what he says, but instead says, "You really should have found somewhere to rest instead of travelling a thousand miles north, Ser Jaime. You would have healed long ago if you had."

She is formal, and closed off, and suspicious. And if Jaime's being truly honest with himself, he's loved her for far longer than he realized, loved all the versions of her, even when she'd been like _this _. But it's hard to see her like this again now when it's such a huge step _backwards _from where they'd been, and Jaime knows that he is the one that sent them careening in this direction.

He doesn't deserve to turn them around, he knows he doesn't… but he's here now, and she's by his side, and her closeness makes him want to at least _try _. Words stick in his throat, though. _I didn't want to leave _would be a lie, because he _did _, just not for the reasons she might have thought. _I didn't mean to hurt you _isn't true, either; he'd known exactly what he was doing, exactly the cost, and he'd done it anyway. _I didn't die _? Another untruth, because Jaime thinks a part of him _did _die down there. Not on the outside, obviously; he's battered and bruised and even a little broken, but his body's not repair. His mind, though… it's not the same, and he's not sure yet whether Cersei's voice and her words fading away will really change him for the better, or just leave him an empty shell who doesn't know _where _he really belongs.

In the end, Jaime says "I didn't want to leave _you _." That one word, that emphasis on how much _Brienne _matters to him, changes the meaning of the sentence entirely, and he thinks he's fairly satisfied with it until she seems to shrug it off as if it's just as hollow as the other falsehoods he'd considered saying out loud to her.

"My condolences about your sister. I know she mattered a great deal to you." Brienne says instead, like he's said nothing at all to her, and Jaime wants to shout _you matter a great deal to me _. But the effort of it might have him collapse against her entirely, and he's not sure she'd listen to him, anyway.

Instead, he says, "I'd rather have condolences on the loss of my child, if it's all the same to you." His memories of Cersei are too complicated - they will _always _be complicated - but he's not sure he misses her. The quiet in his head where her voice used to be is still unsettling, but he doesn't miss his _own _voice, always wondering what scheme she'd want him to abed her in next, wondering what atrocity he might have to condone and continue loving her through…

It had been too much. It had made him tired - and trying to convince Brienne that he was here for her the first time, and a part of him is here for her _again _, that makes him tired, too. Jaime had begun to feel that _everything _, his whole entire life, just made him bloody tired.

"My condolences about your child," Brienne corrects herself, and her voice _does _sound a bit softer this time, as their interminably long journey through Winterfell's hallways continue. There's only one other time Jaime remembers this journey feeling so endless, and it was when he'd gone to seek her out after the Long Night… when he'd been full of doubt at how she'd receive him, self-loathing for only finally admitting what she meant to him _now _, and more than anything, full of _hope _for them.

Maybe in another life, it wouldn't have been a child with Cersei he'd been rushing to save. Maybe in another life… maybe _staying _could have been to protect a child instead, and that thought nearly knocks the wind out of him.

_Seven hells, what was he doing, thinking like that? What had he _done_, leaving her and obliterating any chance they might have had for such a future_ _? _

Jaime's thoughts sometimes felt more dangerous than any Mad Queen or dragon or barrel of wildfire could ever be. And as Brienne finally opened the door to his chambers - _so cold, so small, so barren compared to the ones they'd shared _\- he feels the tiredness seep into his bones again.

She eases him onto the edge of the bed, but doesn't dare help him change into clean clothes like she might have done once without hesitation. Instead, she pulls back the furs to where he can slide beneath them, and insists, "You need rest, Ser Jaime."

"And the sooner I go to sleep, the sooner you can be rid of me?" he asks, because if apologies don't work, maybe he can at least get a rise out of her through poking and prodding like he once did. Anything to get her to react, to get more from her than this rehearsed, even-mannered Brienne that treats him as if he's a stranger rather than a man who loves her desperately and didn't do enough to make sure she knew that when he had the chance.

"I expect I won't be rid of you for quite some time, Ser," she counters, and it's not _quite _what he'd hoped for, the fire's not quite there… but he thinks he hears a hint of some emotion, at least, and as he sinks into the pillows, he's too tired to hope for more.

She's right, after all. Brienne is right about nearly everything when it comes to him, except for where his feelings for her are concerned. Right now, he's too exhausted to do anything to convince her of them, or to assure her that he's not going to leave this time. His heart's not divided; he owes no loyalty to anyone but her anymore.

His eyes flutter closed, and he can already feel his breathing starting to slow. He tries to listen for the sound of Brienne's retreating footsteps, but instead, he feels her smooth the covers over him, and a whisper so soft that it might have been the start of his dreams rather than the last fleeting grasp he has on reality.

"I'm quite glad you're alive… Jaime."

His mind, for the first time in weeks, is blissfully blank as he sleeps.


	5. chapter 5

**Author's Note: **So this chapter kind of... went off the rails from what I originally had planned in my outline. Like, I had a full page of notes and this... only includes like the first five or six lines of what I had in my notes, so I guess the rest is getting bumped into the next chapter. Still, lots more to come, guys - with Tyrion having fled instead of staying in KL as a prisoner, the conflict with Dany lasts a little bit longer than the 20 minutes it took on screen.

* * *

The next morning dawns, and for the first time since he'd woken in Tyrion's tent, with his brother and Bronn hovering over him, Jaime does not think about his pain. Instead, the first thought that seeps into his mind when he wakes is Brienne, and he squeezes his eyes shut again, wanting to relish in the moment when she'd told him she was glad he was alive for just a little longer.

He doubts that today will hold another moment like that. He thinks perhaps it will take _lots _of days, before she shows him any fondness at all.

But she is well worth waiting for, so Jaime can wait. Or… perhaps he can't. No one has heard any update about Daenerys Targaryen, about whether she still lies in wait in Dragonstone or she has gone to reclaim her throne in King's Landing. Perhaps she's fucked off entirely - that would be nice, although entirely too convenient, and Jaime knows that it's a pipe dream.

She will come North. She will _have _to come North, because Sansa Stark is too bull-headed to bow down to her, and Jaime cannot help but admire that. He'd defied a tyrant once, when no one else had had the courage to do so. Sure, they all heralded _Robert _for rebelling, but gods knew he hadn't done it because Aerys was a danger to them all. He'd done it as part of a pissing contest with Rhaegar, all over Lyanna Stark's love. His reasons had been wrong, all wrong, but that feels like another lifetime now. His reputation, Robert, Rhaegar… what does Jaime care for any of it now, when he should have been dead already? When he's probably going to be dead for real bloody soon?

It would be nice, to die knowing that something better than Aerys and Robert and Cersei and Daenerys comes next for Westeros, but it's not his first priority. Jaime is selfish in his hope that he can at least make sure Brienne doesn't regret being glad that he's alive before he's burned to death, or his throat is slit by an unsullied soldier. Or perhaps he'll get to die in actual combat, although that seems too kind a fate for the Dragon Queen to dole out. Jaime doubts anyone who can burn women and children with such reckless abandon will allow _him _an honorable death.

Gods, his head is pounding. Over the past two moons, Jaime's thoughts have been too loud for him at the best of times; just waking up after a journey he was not physically fit for is _far _from the best of times. He can't bear to lie about and dwell on it any longer, so he does his best to push his battered body up from the bed and gets ready to go about his day

* * *

Jaime feels aimless, wandering the halls of Winterfell, his pace still slow from the injuries. He knows he should eat something, that food will help him rebuild his strength, but his stomach is in knots. Though his conversation with Brienne had ended on a _high _note last night, the rest of his encounters with her since he'd arrived had been less than satisfactory, and well… all of their days could be numbered. Jaime doesn't have time to sit around and sulk, and without any other true purpose in his life, all his thoughts zero in on her and repairing at least a bit of the damage he has done.

He knows he doesn't deserve to approach her. If their circumstances were different and there _weren't _a madwoman with a flying, fire-breathing killing machine out to get the woman Brienne had sworn her sword to, perhaps Jaime would give her a bit of space. Some room to breathe, and to forgive him.

But Jaime had been compelled to come North, to come to _her _, and his steps had taken him, unbidden, to the ramparts, and if he were feeling stronger he'd lean against them, jutting his head out over the open air just to get a closer view of her.

As it is, though, he doesn't trust himself not to topple right over the castle walls, and Jaime doesn't fancy finding out what hurts more - being crushed by rocks, or dropping from this height onto the hard ground below.

Jaime is interested to see that Brienne isn't leading the mid-morning training alone. Instead, she and Podrick stand as if they're equals, their eyes trained on different men, children, and even women who are trying their best to learn the movements being taught to them. Arya Stark lurks just behind them, quiet and shadowlike as always, but aside from a passing glance at the girl he'd come to _tolerate _during their travels, his eyes don't leave Brienne again.

"Fucking pathetic, aren't you?" Bronn says some time later, and Jaime's not sure how long he's been staring when his brother and the sellsword come to watch with him. It doesn't matter how long he's been there; Brienne has been so laser-focused on her trainees that she hasn't looked up to see Jaime once.

Jaime thinks maybe if he stays silent, Bronn will leave him alone, or at least go back to talking about his bloody castle instead of about Jaime's blunders with Brienne. He _couldn't _have stayed here with her, he couldn't have… but he could have _told _her that, could have given her an explanation instead of trying to sneak away from her in the middle of the night.

Bronn doesn't stop, though. It's not enough that Jaime's injured and weary and has utterly _failed _to protect anyone he's ever loved; no, Bronn has to pick him apart more, has to voice the things that Jaime already knows for himself but tries not to dwell on for too long because they only bring him more pain.

"Can't say I ever imagined anyone mooning so much over _her _, though I'd fuck her too, that's for sure." Jaime catches Bronn's words again, and for a moment he imagines how _delightful _it would be to smack him across the face with his golden hand, to hear the smack of solid gold against bone ringing out across the courtyard. But he's not at full strength, he knows it, so instead he just lets Tyrion tutt his disapproval while Jaime's gaze drifts back across the yard instead.

Podrick and Brienne are still leading as vigorously as always, but he doesn't see Arya Stark any longer. He thinks mayhaps he should go and find her - she's a pain in the arse, too, in her own way, but she sounds better than Bronn in this moment.

Except as he turns to head back into the castle and stop his _staring _, he finds she's already on the ramparts with them.

"Fucking hell," he curses, loudly enough that he thinks maybe Brienne might hear and realize that she's had a watcher on the walls this whole time. He lowers his voice this time, and asks her, "Do you _always _have to sneak up on us like that? I don't need to add 'heart attack' to the list of things wrong with me."

Arya smirks a little bit at that, like she's immensely pleased with herself, then says, "Sansa wants to see us all in the great hall in an hour. Try not to stare so much then - Bronn's right, it's getting a little pathetic."

Then she's gone, like a whisper on the wind, and Jaime decides he may as well begin his slow trek towards _whatever _meeting Sansa Stark has apparently called for them all.

* * *

The room is just as tense as when they supped together last night, but Jaime can feel almost instantly that it is a different kind of tension. The underlying mistrust between many of the people in the room is still there, but that isn't what's driving this meeting. It isn't about their differences; it's about what they _share _, and that is a common enemy in the South.

"I know what we have heard in ravens. I know what Bran has seen in his visions. But all of you were _there _. And all of you must tell me what we will soon be dealing with," Sansa urges them, and Jaime looks towards Arya, figuring it's only right for her to go first.

And maybe, he is filled with dread at telling his story. Because as Sansa's sworn sword, Brienne is there, and Jaime feels that any information he has isn't particularly _useful _. His part in this had been mostly revolving around Cersei, and his sister is dead and gone now. Intelligence about her doesn't suit their purpose; recounting his own story is only going to serve to try and justify why he left.

He's not sure he wants to do that in front of an audience. Like so many other moments in Jaime's life, he really only wants to share his shame with Brienne directly, but he figures he has little choice.

Everything Arya has to say, Jaime already knows. How she'd left with Sandor Clegane, how she'd been trying to complete her 'list' and get the vengeance her family deserved. It almost makes him laugh - Arya Stark hadn't even wanted to end the war between queens, or save Westeros from his sister's rule. She'd just wanted _revenge _, plain and simple, and he thinks again that he likes her more than the rest of the Starks. She's so near-sighted sometimes; she doesn't want to be a hero, or to think about what comes _after _. She lives in the moment, she takes action, she looks out for her _family _.

The rest of the Starks? They are sometimes mysteries to him, but Arya he feels he can understand.

She recounts the horrors on the ground, the mothers and sons and daughters that she'd tried to spur to action. She laments watching them burn, watching them shrivel up and die while somehow she'd survived. Arya tells about how she'd had the chance to leave, to ride off and forget that she'd ever been there at all, but she'd instead waited for Jon, desperate for some kind of reaction from her brother that might give her hope.

Instead, all she'd gotten was that awful phrase. _She's everyone's queen now _.

Not his. She'll never, ever be Jaime's. Never anyone's in this room - Jaime knew that even _without_ the way Sansa Stark winces at the news that Jon has stood by such a monster - and it's only that small comfort that lets him actually speak when Arya concludes her tale and it's his turn to go.

He bows his head slightly to Sansa before he starts, then casts his eyes downward.

"She's not a forgiving woman, Daenerys Targaryen. When I was captured, she didn't ask why I was there, or give me any sort of chance to explain. For all she knew, I could have been there to aid her cause - in a way, I almost was."

Jaime's eyes flicker towards Brienne. She is looking at him, and he sees _something _there, some hint of emotion that he can't quite read yet. He's so caught up in his own flurry of feelings that he hardly has a chance to analyze. Jaime doesn't want to talk about Cersei in front of everyone - in truth, he'd rather not talk about her at all, when his failure is still such a gaping wound. When her taunts are still so freshly and precariously banished from his mind.

Still, the way her eyebrows furrow and her lips are pressed in a thin line… it doesn't look like the hurt he expects from her, when he mentions his voyage to King's Landing and Cersei. It reminds him more of her stricken look when he'd told her no one had ever _asked _why he'd slain Aerys.

_No _, Jaime stops himself. Because there's no _way _that even after all of this, she can be feeling pity for him for not being listened to, or given a chance to be heard. He thought he knew her like the back of his hand, but there is no way - their weeks apart must have made his vision fuzzy, or his laser-focus on her must have him seeing things that give him false hope.

Still… even if it's _false _hope that she sympathizes with his capture, he takes that hope and lets it guide his voice, continuing with his tale. He keeps his gaze on Brienne, as if he's looking for any tiny opening, any crack that she will give him.

"When Tyrion set me free, my instructions were simple - I was the one of us that might be able to get close to Cersei, to talk some sense into her. I was to have her ring the bells in surrender, then get her onto a boat to start a new life somewhere where her child might be born into a life without fear."

At that, Jaime has to swallow a lump in his throat, and he looks away again. Although he'd told Brienne he only wanted condolences on the child, it still feels so… private. Maybe it's how foreign it feels, to have a room full of people openly _know _it is his. Maybe it's just the sting of knowing he might have actually gotten to _raise _this one, if he'd just managed to do this one damned thing right.

"But I couldn't get there in time. Daenerys had already sunk the Iron Fleet, and that alone wasn't cause for concern. They had scorpions, they were out to shoot her dragon from the sky - but somehow Euron Greyjoy survived, and he found me just outside the tunnels to the Red Keep. Stabbed me more than once, thought he was leaving me for dead…"

Jaime's hand goes to his hip, where Widow's Wail should be, but he hasn't worn the sword since they arrived in Winterfell. He doesn't feel right, wearing it anymore. Not when Brienne holds the other half, and he's betrayed her trust. Not when he resides under the Stark's roof, knowing that he'd betrayed them, too, in a way. Perhaps later he'll give it to Ayra - right now, he just needs to tell them about how he used it to kill Euron Greyjoy, and then hobble into the Red Keep to find Cersei.

"The bells had already rung, and Daenerys didn't just come for her herself. There was no showdown, no queen vs. queen confrontation. Just Cersei, scared for her child's life, running towards the very same exit I had just come in."

The moment itself had been agonizing. Cersei's humanity was something he'd rarely seen in recent years, but she'd seemed so _genuine _then, so fragile and small and like the sister he'd once cared so much for. He doesn't know how to _explain _that, though - that Cersei actually backing down was such stark proof of how terrifying Daenerys's wrath had been.

He didn't need to, though. Jaime forgets that Sansa Stark had spent years under his sister's tutelage, and she interjects her own thoughts.

"I knew your sister better than I cared to, Ser Jaime. She always had a plan for everything, always thought she was cleverer than anyone else. To hear of her in such a state is… alarming," Sansa says, her voice measured. "If the woman who blew up the Sept of Baelor was terrified, then I feel I might be able to imagine a bit of what an atrocity you all witnessed."

Jaime starts to sigh in relief. He forgets how nice it is to have other people who know and understand Cersei. Tyrion, for all that he _tried _to, had never quite known what to expect from his sister. Sansa Stark, it seems, has an understanding of what she was, not tainted by childhood memories or foolish faith that familial bonds might matter after all.

She continues, and the sigh catches in Jaime's chest. "Did you know she once told me to never love anyone but your children? And yet, when Stannis Baratheon attacked on the Blackwater, she was ready and willing to slip poison to Tommen to keep him from being taken. It seems she truly underestimated our Dragon Queen, if she was not prepared for a city collapsing under the weight of fire."

He hadn't known that - that Cersei had warned the girl to only ever love her own children. He doesn't want to _think _about what that might mean, because while he's realizing that his relationship with Cersei had been twisted, and that the last few years in particular have been viewed through a rose-colored lens that he never should have looked through… Sansa's words make him wonder if his twin had ever even loved him at _all _.

He glances towards Brienne again - sweet, innocent, honorable Brienne. A woman who certainly _had _loved him, though he hadn't deserved it. He sees pity in her eyes, and _fuck _. He's not the only one who's read between the lines of Sansa's words that way, and he doesn't understand what the _point _was. Is she rubbing it in that he'd been especially stupid, to go and chase after Cersei and death when they were one and the same? Is she really just trying to illustrate a point about Daenerys's atrocities?

Jaime doesn't have anything else to add. His blood is still running cold, his whole life being put into even bitterer perspective by a few simple words, and all the fight has left him as he says, "That's all I have to add, Lady Stark. I doubt anything that happened once I was covered in rocks is particularly helpful."

Jaime wants to push back his chair and leave, but instead, he pretends to listen as Tyrion and Bronn speak their bits. Shame he's too busy turning every stone of his past over in his mind to listen, since he still doesn't _quite _know why Bronn was there to dig him out of the rubble, but he'll just have to ask another time.

Jaime really _was _the stupidest Lannister, and if he thinks about all of the things he's lost in his lifetime because of his stupidity, he might throw up. Every time his mind stumbles on another instance of when Cersei might have been using him, might have been playing with his emotions, his stomach rolls, and even glancing at Brienne doesn't help. How could it, when he'd thrown away her affections to go crawling back to Cersei once more?

_It was for the child _, Jaime reminds himself, but if he'd only seen it sooner, there wouldn't have been a child to go back to. It's going to drive him as mad as a Targaryen, he thinks.

And then Arya Stark kicks him under the table, and Jaime realizes it's time to pay attention to the conversation again.

"We've also received news that Yara Greyjoy is gathering the rest of the Northern Fleet, to help Daenerys in quashing any _rebels _that might be holding out from bending the knee," Sansa says bitterly. It must be a hard pill to swallow, when Theon Greyjoy had laid down his life to defend the Starks. His own sister is spitting on his sacrifice, staying loyal to a woman who would see the rest of them killed.

_Cersei had wanted him killed _, Jaime thinks, and he wants to be sick all over again. He doesn't have the time for it, though; Brienne is chiming in with war strategy, talk of ships they don't have and troops they haven't trained.

It sounds hopeless, but they've fought hopeless battles before. Jaime can tell by the lilt in her voice that she refuses to be scared of this one, and it's surprisingly the first bloom of light that breaks through the darkness he's been letting consume him all meeting long.

Brienne believes they can do it. Stubborn, brave, strong - she is ready to spring to action and fight the crazy queen that threatens them from the South, and all those who follow her.

Tyrion, who's been as sullenly quiet as Jaime, interjects to say, "That's all well and good, except I doubt we're going to accomplish _anything _with this strategy unless we first kill her dragon."

The meeting ends with Bronn saying the first useful thing Jaime's heard out of his mouth in _months _.

"Guess it's a good thing I know how to make them scorpions that killed the last one then, isn't it?"

Of course, he promptly ruins it by shooting Sansa Stark a wink and saying, "Best get to preparing me a castle now, your ladyship."

Still, it's a _start _. It's a purpose, besides Jaime just focusing all his energy on a way that he might properly apologize to Brienne. And so, they all stand from the table and get to work, preparing for the inevitable war to come.


	6. chapter 6

**Author's Note:** I'm so sorry for the delay in this chapter! If you read any of my other works in progress, you'll know that I have a friend in town through July 16th, and her visit's made me a little slower on the writing front! Thank you guys for sticking with me, though. I finally mapped out what I want to happen through the rest of this story, and we're about at the halfway mark now.

Not beta'd so I apologize for any mistakes!

* * *

Although Jaime still aches from the weight of the Red Keep falling on him, he knows that with war on the horizon he must get back into shape. He wasn't the fighter he'd once been even during the Long Night, and now he's hardly even a fighter at all. He's no good to anyone, sulking around the castle and nursing his broken body back to health.

Jaime knows precisely who he'd _like _to have train him, but he also knows that it's too much to ask of her just yet. Brienne shows him flashes of softness, lets him see tiny cracks that show she still cares _somewhat _, but she's got the shambles of Northern fighters to train, with the bulk of the force having gone South with Jon Snow.

_Wonder what the fuck they're doing now. Probably all burned alive, too _, Jaime scoffs, though no word had been provided about what Lord Snow himself was doing these days. He wonders if Bran Stark _knew _\- that all-seeing fucker - and was just withholding it from his sisters. But that was a question for another day.

Right now, his pressing question was for Arya Stark, and it seemed that for once the girl actually _wanted _to be found, because she was skulking about in the courtyard when Jaime approached her, a practice sword in his hand.

"Train with me, _Lady _Stark?" he asks her, and he's met with a smack from the broadside of that pointy little sword she'd always holding at her side.

"Only if you never call me that again. Sansa's Lady Stark, I'm just _Arya _," she says, delighting at the way that he rubs his arm and winces at the pain she'd caused.

And so, they begin.

* * *

It doesn't take long for the one-handed, hated Kingslayer and the fierce, beloved Night-Kingslayer to draw attention. Most of their audience only pause for a time, either to scoff at how far Jaime's skill has fallen or to gawk at Arya.

They both ignore them; their judgment doesn't matter as much as the training that Jaime and Arya are doing. If he can just get back into shape, then perhaps…

At this rate, he doesn't expect to survive. He doesn't have much to survive _for _. Tyrion and Brienne are the only people left in this world that he loves, and maybe he's fonder of this wisp of a Stark girl than he'd expected to be, but they'd all be fine without him. Their lives would go on, maybe better without him than they ever were _with _.

But he can make his death _count _. He can make his death matter, in a way that dying with Cersei underneath the Red Keep would not have. He sees that now - that Cersei was always going to die, that she was never going to get the Dragon Queen's mercy. His sister was never going to win, and his child was never going to be born, and Jaime couldn't even manage to leave this world with them properly.

He was still sure that not dying in the South was just putting off the inevitable a little longer. Jaime would die here, and he would go down saving the few people he still cared for, and that was that.

* * *

Days go by, and Northmen still stop and state. Jaime and Arya still ignore them, going blow for blow, Jaime always feeling too slow, too weak, too many steps behind. He struggles, but he persists, and the watches are paid no mind.

There's one person who stops to watch them that Jaime doesn't ignore, though. Brienne walks by with Podrick, but rather than continuing on her path, she stops and stares.

Her gaze is like a magnet, and Jaime pauses, gripping his sword more tightly than before as he dares to meet her eyes. Her stance mirrors his, her hand clutching tightly to Oathkeeper, and when her eyes drop to his hand, they look quizzically at his non-descript sword, so different than the other half of her own.

Jaime wants to tell her that it's because he doesn't deserve it. He wants to tell her _so _many things, that he didn't leave for the reasons she thinks, that she meant so much to him and that he wishes he could take it all back.

More than that, he wants _her _to speak to him. And he thinks, maybe, as her lips softly part, that she might be about to.

And then Arya whacks him with her sword again, and Jaime's furious gaze turns to her in time to hear her grumbling, "If you're going to be so easy to beat, you can find someone else to train with."

By the time his eyes go back to where Brienne and Pod had been, they're gone.

* * *

Podrick and Brienne had always seemed a bit inseparable, ever since Jaime had sent the squire away with her, but they seem more in sync now than ever. Jaime wonders idly as they enter the dining hall together whether Podrick is glued to her side to keep him from trying to talk to her, or if perhaps he's more moral support than protector.

He can't imagine _why _she'd need moral support, though. Jaime's hardly worth crying over, yet cry over him he'd seen her do just as he'd left the gates of this castle the last time.

His eyes trail them, and the flooding of memories from that awful night make him want to get up and leave the room. He's about to, too, when Podrick and Brienne shock him by spying his table and coming over to sit with him instead.

_Baby steps _, Jaime thinks in wonder, the morose thoughts of just moments ago gone. Will his brain be like this for as long as he lives? Whipping back and forth between desolation and hope on a whim?

At least he expects the rest of his life to be quite short, so he won't suffer from the mental whiplash for long.

"Ser Brienne," Jaime greets, his heart hammering traitorously hard in his chest. "Podrick," he adds with a nod, biting back the hints of a smile at having the company he so desired, and by her own choice, as well.

"You looked quite weak earlier," Brienne comments by way of greeting, though Jaime _knows _her, and he knows it's not meant unkindly. "Perhaps you need to train with a heavier sword. And it might be to your advantage to have some other sort of weapon as well," she states matter-of-factly, her eyes trailing to his golden hand as she says it.

She hates the thing, same as anyone else, but she's the only one Jaime thinks might hate it for a different reason. Not because of what it represents, not because of what should be there instead or what hides underneath it, but because it's a piece of Cersei. An ugly, gaudy thing that reminds everyone of his golden sister, not so golden when he last saw her as rubble fell down over them.

He nods his head, saying, "I appreciate the advice. I'll take it under consideration."

It's formal, it's stiff, but it's a start. It doesn't make his heart melt the way her admission that she was glad he was alive did, but it makes him feel _something _, that they can talk and be civil and that maybe, someday, it'll be more.

He wants to rush it, to apologize and explain again, right here in front of Podrick. Before he can, though, the conversation continues, on Brienne's terms again, as she asks in a low voice, "Are you well, Ser Jaime? You haven't looked yourself."

_Oh _. Her comment was about more than just his physical weakness, he realizes, and Jaime swallows the lump that forms in his throat. She's actually noticed that he's torn apart inside, too, that he's fitful and restless and still so unsure why he, of all people have survived.

"I'm fine," he croaks out, thinking of the dead bodies, of a mad Targaryen killing the people he'd once saved, of the child he'd never gotten to meet, of the people he betrayed. Of Cersei's voice in his head, still fading all the time, but occasionally still sharp and cruel and undoing all the progress he might be making towards feeling better.

He's not fine. He's not fine at all, but here in a hall with Podrick, and the Starks, and gods know who else around is not where he wants to confide that in her. If he even deserves to confide that in her at all. Instead, he says, "Thank you for asking," and then sits quietly, pushing his food back and forth across the plate as she and Podrick talk over the men they've been training all day.

He doesn't say anything else, still shaken by the fact that he's sitting here with her at all, and he doesn't leave until after she and Podrick have gone, not wanting to miss a single second of basking in her company.

* * *

The next day, Jaime takes her advice. He picks up a heavier sword than the one he'd been using - WIdow's Wail would have been heavier, too, but it's still in his chambers, still lying there taunting him, reminding him that Ned Stark never would have wanted him to have it in the first place and that he gave up the right to have a half of something that is Brienne's when he left.

The heavier sword makes him tired faster, and Jaime tiring faster means Arya gets _bored _faster. "Go practice on a dummy or something," she tells him with a huff of annoyance, and he thinks on it for a second before finally deciding what he's going to do.

"No, I'm going to the forge. You should meet me there," Jaime encourages her, and she glares at him like he's stupid for asking her to do _anything _with him.

As if she isn't the person here he spends the most bloody time with at this point, more time even than Tyrion.

He casts a glance over his shoulder as he heads back to his room, expecting her to be long gone, but instead she's staring at his retreating figure, contemplating.

He smirks, because Jaime knows he's got her curious enough to come meet him instead of vanishing to do _whatever _it is she does all day when no one can find her.

* * *

Arya's not there yet when Jaime arrives - at least, not that he can _see _\- so he talks to one of the blacksmith's in the forge instead. Not about Widow's Wail, which is strapped to his side for the first time in weeks, but because listening to Brienne about the heavier sword isn't enough. Jaime wants to do _everything _she'd advised, show her that he takes her words to heart, that he values her opinion.

He wants her to know that not listening to her ask him to _stay _was a fluke, a mistake, and that he'll never ignore her like that again.

The blacksmith, who's a bit miffed to be taken away from working on the scorpions as instructed by Bronn, tells him if it's another hand he'd like, he'd be better off with wood. Jaime asks for other options, and he's just beginning on the merits of Jaime getting a _hook _instead, if he really wants a blacksmith's opinion, when Arya appears out of the shadows.

"If you only wanted me here to encourage you turning all piratey, you would have been better off waiting for Yara Greyjoy and her fleet and asking her instead," Arya snipes, but she circles around him, curiously. Jaime dismisses the blacksmith with a quick thanks for his advice, then gives the Stark girl his full attention.

"Not at all. I have something for you," he told her, fumbling as his sore left arm reached for the sword. He unsheathed it, the Valyrian steel glinting in the dim light of the forge, before holding it out for Arya to take.

She squints at him, looking a bit like she thinks he's lost his mind, and maybe he has. Tywin Lannister would be rolling over in his grave right now if he knew that Jaime had given away one Valyrian steel sword and is now giving away another, but Tywin's not here. No other Lannisters are here, besides Tyrion and Jaime, the last of them - and sometimes he wonders if they're maybe the worst of them.

The Lannisters had always put family first, except for Jaime and Tyrion. And it had kept them alive, not caring for the power or the schemes or the rest of it, but what was the cost? What were their lives really worth now that they'd lived long enough to each help a different madwoman on their quest for the crown?

_Not a whole bloody lot_, Jaime thinks, as he looks expectantly at Arya.

"Are you trying to _give _that to me? It's too big," she huffs, folding her arms over her chest.

"It was your _father's _," Jaime reminds her, thrusting it further forward. "It should be yours."

"I've already got a sword," Arya reminds him, gripping Needle. She'd told him about it on their trip North - about how it was from Jon, how she'd thought she'd lost it but then had found it again. How she'd hidden it during her strange assassin training, unable to let that piece of her life go.

"Well, now you can have another one. Get that blacksmith of yours to reforge it into something you want - seems as good an excuse as any to summon him back North, don't you think?" Jaime teases. It doesn't have the same mirth it might have before, but it's mostly real - Arya Stark is slowly becoming the person he's not scared to be his old self around, and he doesn't hate it.

"You're stupid," Arya gripes, but she finally takes the sword, turning it over in her hands, studying it. He sees something flicker across her face - maybe the ghost of her father - and then she holds a hand out for its sword belt, which Jaime hands over to her as well.

"You're welcome," he says in reply, and she just rolls her eyes again before flouncing off back into the shadows.

* * *

He trains again with Arya the next day, and she's still got that tiny sword of hers out to fight him with, but he does notice that she's got Widow's Wail _with _her, at least. He tires out quickly again, but pushes through for a while longer before he goes up to the ramparts to watch Brienne for a bit instead.

Bronn and Tyrion seem to have tired of teasing him as he pines, so Jaime has peace and quiet atop the battlements, at least most days. This day, though, the swish of a cloak alerts him to the arrival of Sansa Stark, and Jaime's shoulders hunch.

He respects the older Stark girl, the Lady of Winterfell, much more than he'd expected to. She reminds him of her mother, fierce, devoted to her family, calculating in a way that's not so cruel as Cersei or even what he saw of Daenerys, before she threw subtlety to the wind and torched a city.

"You gave Arya your sword," Sansa observes as he follows Jaime's gaze, to where her sister is training with Brienne. He always enjoys watching Brienne fight, enjoys seeing how powerful she is almost as much as he likes watching her feel comfortable in her own skin for a change. With a sword in her hand, all awkwardness and reservation is gone - with a sword in her hand, she is a masterpiece.

Watching Arya bear Widow's Wail's weight as she tries to keep up with Brienne is fun, too, though. He feels an aching at not having Brienne's sword's twin anymore, but there's something fulfilling about seeing the Stark ancestral sword back in Stark hands, especially when those are the hands of the Stark that is simultaneously the least and most annoying to him.

"It was never really mine," Jaime reminds her. She knows what had happened to Ice, and she'd been there when this half of it had been presented to Joffrey. He'd never talked to her about that day before, the day when the life had choked out of his bastard son for all to see and Sansa Stark had fled King's Landing.

"I should have helped Brienne get you out of King's Landing," Jaime blurts out without even thinking about it. "You never should have had to rely on Littlefinger."

Wind blows through Sansa's hair, and with the sun starting to set, he hears wolves howling in the distance. She fixes him with a curious glare, asking, "Are you always so stuck in the past? We're both here now; it doesn't matter anymore, how we got here."

Jaime shivers a little, whether from the evening cold setting in or from Sansa Stark's words, he isn't quite sure.

"If I were you, Ser Jaime, I'd focus a bit less on what's been done in the past and a bit more on securing a future," she adds, and if it weren't for the fact that she stares directly at Brienne as she says it, Jaime might have thought she meant focus on training for the _war _.

"I'll bear that in mind, Lady Stark," he replies hoarsely as she bids him farewell and heads back into her castle.

Bloody Starks and their bloody meddling. Jaime watches the sword fight below him again, seeing Arya smirk his direction in between blows, and he feels oddly grateful for the fact that they both seem to be encouraging him, despite all the bad he has done.

Maybe his life - and his continued love for their sworn sword - aren't so hopeless after all.

* * *

They've settled into such a routine, training by day as scorpions are built around Winterfell and Sansa pens letters to any who they might rally to their cause. Jaime finds Bran at random points around the castle, always with that far-off look in his eyes, or else with a knowing smile on his face, and it always makes Jaime walk quicker until he's out of the strangest Stark's sights.

One day, though, the routine is interrupted. Bran's face is less serenely all-knowing, and a bit more alarmed, as a council is called. Jaime sits in on it as last time, and notices that he's given a place of honor close to the Starks while Tyrion is seated further down the table, his opinion still not trusted by their hosts.

"Daenerys has returned to King's Landing and finally sat upon her throne," Bran informs them, and Jaime shudders. She'd already been queen in name, even as she'd gone to Dragonstone to lick her wounds or do gods knew what. Actually imagining her on that fucking iron chair made him cringe, though.

He found himself almost longing for the days when Robert had been on the throne. He'd drunk and he'd whored and he'd blown the kingdom's money on frivolity, but Robert Baratheon had never tried to light the city on _fire _. Not like Aerys. Not like Daenerys.

Not like Cersei.

When his sister's face tries to rise up and haunt him, Jaime turns to look at Brienne instead. She's troubled that the dragon queen is on the move, but even with her brows furrowed and concern etched in the lines of her face, the sight of her grounds him, reminds him why he can't just give up and stop fighting.

He will fight, for her. He will fight the voices in his head, and he will fight the horrors that await in the war to come.

Bran finishes detailing what he knows - that the Unsullied and Dothraki fill the Capitol, that the Yara Greyjoy has brought Daenerys an Iron Fleet, that the lords of Westeros have been summoned for a coronation and that many are on their way, too afraid of their new queen to refuse.

"And after?" Jaime asks. He'd made the mistake of assuming what came after once before thanks to Bran Stark, and he'd been wrong. It seems only fitting to ask the boy directly now.

"And after, she brings war here," he says simply, and Jaime nods his head grimly. Around him, so do many of the others - it's what they'd expected, nothing less. They'll be ready when she gets here, as ready as they can be, but it seems that all they can do now is wait and continue on as they've been.

Only Arya is glaring at Bran, suspicious of her brother even after all he's disclosed, and soon Sansa is looking his way, too.

"What is it you're not telling us?" the Stark girls finally ask their brother, as the council watches them. Bran doesn't let any emotion flicker across his face, he never does - but he does pause before giving his sisters the information they require, and that's how Jaime knows that what comes next will not make anyone in this room happy.

"I can't see what she's done with Jon," the strange, all-seeing bird boy admits. He turns to Arya, adding more softly just for her, "Or Gendry."

It takes a beat for that information to sink in, and Jaime leans his head back against his chair, bracing himself. Then, the room breaks into uproar.


	7. chapter 7

Jaime remembers saying once, months ago, that he hated the fucking North. That sentiment waned during warm nights spent with Brienne before he left, and it's waned again since he's been inexplicably welcomed back here even after his betrayal.

It's truer than ever again now, though, as the Northern Lords who _didn't _go to war to fight their own battles shout to be heard over one another. His head's already starting to hurt, and to what _end _? It's not as though the absence of Jon Snow changes anything. Is he even their king anymore? Was he even really ever?

It seems to Jaime that the bastard of Winterfell had left less than a moon after he'd been presented with his crown, leaving Sansa in charge while he cavorted with the woman who threatens to now be the death of them all. Last Jaime had heard, he'd bent the _knee _to said woman, which meant that he wasn't even really their king anymore at all.

If they'd staked a claim at independence again, it certainly wasn't because of Jon Snow. It was because of the redhead sitting as calmly as she possibly could at the head of the table, wearing a mask to hide whatever emotion she felt at the news of her brother's plight so as not to send the heads of houses into even more of a frenzy.

Although… he's not really even her brother, is he? On the way North, Tyrion had told him in confidence that Jon was actually Rhaegar's son, not Ned Stark's, and Arya had reluctantly confirmed it by saying it didn't matter who Jon's parents were, she'd always see him as her brother.

The fact that the North seems ready to abandon their carefully laid plans of the past few weeks all over a secret Targaryen who threw away their independence for the Dragon Queen's sweet cunt… It makes Jaime want to leave and just let dragonfire take them all.

Alys Karstark, a girl Tyrion thinks might have had delusions of being Jon's queen, thinks they should send a search party to look for the 'King in the North' immediately. Yohn Royce, whose loyalty has obviously only ever been to Sansa, insists that they stay their course. Meera Reed, who's only graced Winterfell with her presence of late, at her father's behest, has the nerve to suggest that maybe they should just abandon the North and go and make a new life for themselves, beyond the Wall. Some Manderly or Magnar (or maybe it's even a Mollen, for all Jaime cares) says they should just give the Dragon Queen what they want and perhaps she'll let them live the rest of their days in relative peace.

Idiots, all of them, as far as Jaime's concerned. Their current plan is a longshot, but the only one that might _work _. Leaving Winterfell and the scorpions that are halfway constructed is a suicide mission, but if they want to guarantee their own doom, then so be it.

Sansa rises from her seat and asks them to speak one at a time, saying she will weigh their concerns and suggestions equally before choosing how to proceed. He sees the pain in her eyes when it comes to the missing Jon Snow, but it's only there for a flash before she's the leading lady that she needs to be.

In the madness, Jaime's hardly been able to see how the three people he gives a damn about are reacting to the news. He finds Tyrion and Bronn easily at the far end of the table. Tyrion has that shell-struck look on his face that's been nearly permanently there since Daenerys had ripped his heart out and stomped on it by abandoning every principle he'd assumed she'd stood for. Bronn merely looks amused, like he's waiting to see which of these men and women are going to abandon their keeps to go straight into the dragon's den. Probably because he wants to know what fucking _castles _will be available for him.

Brienne and Arya are a bit harder to find. He expects that they'll be right beside Sansa at the head of the table, but their lady is composedly managing the crowd, and Arya and Brienne, he realizes, have slunk off somewhere. He finally spots them in a shadowy corner near the door, whispering together, and he abandons his own chair to walk over to them.

It's the least thought he's given to whether or not Brienne will want him to approach her since he's arrived, but Jaime _knows _that look in Arya Stark's eyes. There's no time to agonize over whether the woman he loves is going to refute him joining the conversation or not when he can tell that the Stark girl is on the brink of doing something stupid and reckless.

* * *

Whatever Arya is hurriedly whispering to Brienne, she stops the moment Jaime approaches them.

"Ser. My Lady," he says, reverent towards Brienne but with a mock bow to Arya, as if he's just come to say _hello _and isn't highly suspicious of their corner pow-wow. He's met with a kick in the shins, but he barely winces — Arya's a tiny thing, not always as good at inflicting pain as she thinks she is.

"I told you not to call me that," she hisses, and Jaime's almost amused, that she can still find time to resent her title in life so greatly, even with war on the horizon and some secret plan that he's sure she's dying to execute. Always wanting to be the bloody _hero _, the Starks, always wanting to do what they claim is _right _.

Yet if he's right about this one, she's thinking with her heart and not her head right now, preparing another lone trip to King's Landing like the ill-fated one she'd taken with Sandor Clegane the last go-round.

"And I didn't listen. That's a trait I suspect we have in common, not listening," he says, nodding his head in the direction of the Northern leaders, still bickering about whether to stay put, charge into battle on Snow's behalf, or flee. It sounds as though they've moved on from actually talking about which course of action is right and are more focused on which course of action is what Jon Snow _deserves _, and he's sure that Sansa is quietly seething, to hear so many of these men and women deeming their brother not worth _saving _because he'd mistakenly trusted Daenerys Targaryen.

"So what if it is?" Arya asks, her hand going to the hilt of her sword. _Needle _, he sees that she's still favoring the tiny thing from Jon Snow to the heavy sword he'd given her. "Go _not _listen somewhere else! You're no use to us, you're still too slow," she spits, her temper _flaring _.

He wonders how much of her rage is about what's happening to her favorite 'sibling,' and how much of it is about the Baratheon boy, the one who may very well have died already without ever knowing how Arya really felt about him.

That thought makes a pit form in Jaime's stomach, and in the midst of all this noise, he still casts a longing glance towards Brienne. Will _she _die without realizing how much he truly does care for her? _Gods _, he can't let that happen.

It will, though, if Arya Stark gets her way. She looks thunderous, and he can only imagine what she's got up her sleeve, but he knows loyalty to the point of stupidity when he sees it.

"No use to you when you do _what _? Charge south to try and find them?" Jaime challenges. Brienne's face is drawn tightly, giving nothing away, but Arya's face reveals everything right now. No wonder she'd abandoned her assassin training; she can be stonefaced and eerie and deadly at times, but others, there's no way she can quench her emotions.

"_ You _seemed to think that was a brilliant idea, once," Arya reminds him crossly, and when she's like this, it reminds him of her age. Around how old he was, when he killed Aerys. Still so young, in the grand scheme of it all.

"Aye, and my going to King's Landing did _nothing _. I couldn't save them, and I lost everything _else _I held dear for trying," he snaps back at her. For a moment, he's almost forgotten that Brienne is still there; he doesn't know how she fits into Arya's plan, he's just focused on _her _, this strange girl he's grown protective of, this stubborn girl who he wants to keep safe.

He hears a sharp intake of breath, though, and is reminded that his Lady Knight is beside them. Jaime's head snaps towards her, trying to read her expression, but she's right back to being stone-faced and neutral.

_Do you realize I mean you? That I lost you, and I'd do anything to take it back? _ He only spares a moment to think on it before his focus is back on Arya, knowing that if he leaves her to her own devices for even a moment, she's like to disappear.

"Going on a suicide mission won't save them. Either they'll be dead before you get there, or the Dragon Queen's holding them as a bargaining chip and isn't likely to kill them _before _she comes North. Use your _brain _, girl — your place is _here _," Jaime tells her, and he can tell Arya wants to _snarl _at the thought. She hates inaction, she hates waiting just the same as he does, but a three week ride South isn't the kind of action she needs to be taking.

"My place is with _Jon _," she argues, and Jaime hears the unspoken _and Gendry _on her lips without her even saying it.

"The same Jon who told you to get as far away from King's Landing as you could? Your place is with _Sansa _, both of yours," he insists, ready to fight her bitterly on this if he has to.

It's _not _just that he wants them where he can lay his life down to protect them, it's _not _. He knows that's a part of it, that he's sure he's going to die but he wants to do it in a way that can help Brienne _live _, but he also knows that there's nothing _for _them, in the South. Just a scorched wasteland and an impossible task, and a death that won't make a difference, one that won't turn the tides of the war.

Jaime hates it, even considering that Brienne might not survive this, but if she doesn't, she deserves to die in a way that'll be remembered. She deserves to be in songs, and history books, to be the thing of legend that he already knows her to be.

If she and Arya Stark leave now and go South, they'll die namelessly, facelessly, lost in a sea of people who haven't the faintest clue who they even are.

He's so lost in his own thoughts that he almost doesn't notice Arya has grown quiet. Brienne, he knows, will have digested what he's said immediately — she has two Lady Starks to protect, but Sansa's the one who needs a warrior behind her more than this tiny, murderous teen. She can't be in two places at once, and Sansa's the one she swore her sword to first. _Sansa _is the one that's at the center of Daenerys Targaryen's ire, and Jaime's at least done his job in ensuring that Brienne won't be going anywhere.

Arya's stormy eyes are glancing towards her sister, who seems to have finally reached a consensus with the Northern lords to stay here, with their scorpions and their supplies and their soft places to rest.

"Okay. But if they die, I'm blaming you for all eternity. I'll follow you to your stupid seven hells just to remind you it's your fault," Arya relents, and they retake their seats at the war table.

Brienne, across from him, actually meets his eyes and gives him a small nod. Maybe it doesn't matter to her, how desperately he misses her, but at least she haven't given up on him completely. Jaime knows that she thinks he's done the right thing, tempering Arya's worst instincts, and that small consolation is enough to get him through the rest of the meeting.

* * *

Jaime leaves the war council before Brienne or Arya do, who linger to speak with Sansa. Jaime wants to wait for them, either to keep an eye on Arya and see if she keeps her word or to see if Brienne's interested in speaking to him more, he's not sure which. He settles in the hallway with Tyrion, catching his younger brother before he can slink away encompassed in a cloud of his recent shame.

"What do you think she's done with them?" Jaime asks quietly; Tyrion knows this Dragon Queen better than he does, after all.

"I'd hope Bran would know if she'd burned them alive," Tyrion says bitterly, and Jaime can tell by his brother's tone that it's a real possibility. That Gendry and Jon might have disappeared off of Bran's bizarre brain map because they're nothing more than ash.

"So much for buying his loyalty with a lordship — wonder what the blacksmith did to earn her ire," Jaime mutters, and Tyrion shudders to think on it. Jaime wonders if he's shuddering for Gendry Baratheon, or if he's shuddering for himself. He can only imagine the near misses his younger brother might have had, and death by dragonfire still isn't out of the question for him, if their plans to stop Daenerys and Drogon don't work.

Jaime's just opened his mouth to suggest a list of stupid things Arya's 'friend' might have done to cross his queen when the door opens, and Brienne and Podrick exit first. He looks up at her, still floored everytime he sees her, still kicking himself for letting someone whose presence so _captivates _him get away — and when she looks uncomfortable under his gaze, he looks past her, towards where Sansa and Arya are huddled together at the end of the table.

"They'll be a while, then?" he asks, as if he was waiting for Arya only and speaking with her doesn't matter to him. _So much for that resolution to prove to her his feelings _. The Dragon Queen could be on the move any day now, and Jaime's still only managed to get a few small chinks into the armor Brienne has around her heart.

"They will be. If you need someone else to train with in the meanwhile, I can watch you and Podrick have a go of it," Brienne volunteers, though, surprising him, Tyrion, and Pod alike with the offer. Tyrion hides a smirk behind his hand, and Jaime would smack him if it weren't such a refreshing change to see his brother have some life to him.

"Thank you," Jaime agrees, the ghost of a smile flitting over his features as he follows them out in the direction of the training yard.

* * *

Two sweaty hours later, Jaime's feeling better than he has in ages. Oh, his body is sore, his muscles screaming for rest, but he didn't want to stop, not when Brienne was there, barking orders at him, even touching his left arm occasionally to help him get a better grip on his new sword.

If her eyes linger on it, with the unspoken question of _why _he's given Widow's Wail to Arya, they don't do so for long, and Jaime thinks maybe he's imagined it, her even caring about his weapon-swap.

Still, he's basking in the normalcy of it as darkness starts to settle and Podrick and Brienne ask if he's planning to come in with them for their evening meal. It's almost like he's been accepted back into their strange little family of sorts, and Jaime knows that he's still a far cry from where they were before he left, but this afternoon, he's also felt much nearer to it than he has since he left.

He's about to nod his head when he sees Arya, skulking about, headed in the direction of the gates. Jaime doubts she's planning to leave — she's far too clever for that, she'd have vanished like a shadow if she wanted to disappear without being caught — but she doesn't seem herself, either.

"Go on," Brienne says softly, understanding that he's _worried _for the Stark girl, of all the bloody people. They'd made a promise to Catelyn Stark all those years ago, and for so long, it was only Brienne fulfilling it. Sure, he'd given her the sword and the armor and the squire to do so, but Jaime'd hardly done anything himself, to look after them.

Now, this strange kinship he has with Arya Stark, it feels a little like redemption, and Brienne nods her head at him again, a fondness he hasn't seen in so long in her eyes.

Jaime's heart feels strangely full as Pod and Brienne head into the castle, and he walks over to Arya Stark instead.

* * *

"Not headed to King's Landing, are you?" Jaime teases her when he reaches her, and Arya folds her arms over her chest.

"I thought you'd want to go inside with _her _," she huffs, and he raises an eyebrow doubtfully.

"Hoping _Podrick _would be the one to come give you a penny for your thoughts, then?" Jaime challenges, and she scoffs.

"Of course not, stupid. I just didn't think you'd actually come with me when you could go inside with Brienne instead." Jaime supposes it's a fair assumption; he had been pining for her their whole journey North, after all, and his status on that front hasn't exactly changed. Still, Arya seems troubled, and he doesn't take that lightly.

"Oh, so you'd have gone running off with your Blacksmith if I was all alone, looking like I could clearly use someone to talk to? You're so kind," he retorts as Arya ignores him and marches towards the gates of Winterfell. No one dares question her; the guards slowly open the gates for them instead, and Jaime's expected to just follow after her instead without a question as to where they're going.

He doesn't shut up for long, though. As soon as they're out of earshot, wading through the _fucking _snow, he asks, "Are you bringing me out here so I can freeze to death? Because I don't appreciate that, I'm used to warm Southern weather, I think I'd prefer that dragon roasting after all."

"Forget dragons," Arya says in response, and doesn't offer anything else. Jaime starts needling her then, asking if she ever gets swallowed by snow drifts since she's so tiny, or if her temper's so fiery that the snow just melts in her path.

To her credit, she doesn't rise to his bait or tell him to shut up for quite some time, and when she _does _raise a hand to silence him, it's because she hears wolves in the distance, and she's trying to catch what direction they're in. Jaime expects them to march _away _from a pack of wild wolves, but he should know better than to _assume _things when it comes to the Stark children. They're always catching him off guard, and he drags his feet following her towards the howls, but he does all the same.

"Oh, so it's feeding me to _wolves _you're after, huh? I stopped your plans and now I've got to be wolf food?" Jaime gibes, and Arya shakes her head.

"Not _you _. But… well, we don't have much of an army, do we?" she asks him, her voice sounding surprisingly concerned. She's right — their numbers are severely limited, so many Northmen still trapped in the South, afraid to head home and cross Daenerys Targaryen. They're as good as prisoners now, staying there either under threat of retaliation if they leave or maybe held back by Lord Snow and whatever it is he's doing that Bran can't see.

Or _can _he? Jaime wonders if maybe the Stark boy is just fucking with them all, trying to set them down some course by lying and getting a reaction out of them that's to his favor. But Jaime doesn't want to waste his time wondering at Bran Stark and his visions and his uses for them; it'll only give him a headache, and he's got more important things to worry about.

Like the lack of army of which Arya speaks. This isn't like fighting the dead; they can't just kill _one _person and have the rest of them shatter like glass. Fighting won't cease just like that, not even if they kill Daenerys Targaryen; her band of Unsullied and Dothraki are blindly loyal to the woman, and there'll be fighting to follow, even if she and her dragon do fall.

That's _one _worry. Another is the howls getting increasingly close, and Arya's steely determination as she continues stepping in their direction with Jaime in tow.

"Are you going to tell me what wolves have to do with an army, or not?" he asks, impatience hiding the fact that he _is _a little bit afraid. He has his sword, but Jaime's reflexes are barely enough to keep up in battle with _Podrick, _as he'd learned earlier. He certainly can't fight off a whole pack of wolves.

"_ Direwolves _," she corrects him reverently, and Jaime wants to roll his eyes. Targaryens and their dragons. Starks and their direwolves. He _really _should have demanded some bloody lions at some point in his life, if these mad houses and their sigil animals were going to end up being the company he keeps.

"Fine, _direwolves _. What makes you think — " Jaime's question is cut off abruptly as something comes hurtling into their clearing, and he doesn't even have time to draw his sword before it's upon Arya.

The metal swishes through the air as he pulls it back, ready to try and attack this beast that's attacking Arya.

And then he hears her _laugh _.

"I missed you too, Nymeria," Arya says, and Jaime crouches to see the wolf _licking _her. Around the edge of the clearing, more wolves have gathered at the treeline, watching the large one that Arya has now sat up to hug with interest.

"This is the beast you were muttering about back in the Riverlands?" Jaime asks, taking a step back as it bares its teeth at her.

"She's not a _beast _, she's a leader of her pack. And… I think we might need their help," Arya says with a sigh. She looks like a girl who doesn't _want _to ask these animals to die for her, but also like a warrior who knows that sometimes, you have to ask the tough questions if you're going to get what you want.

"I think we need all the help we can get," Jaime agrees as Nymeria sniffs at him, like she's unsure what to make of this one-handed lion that's just followed a _crazy girl _into a snow-covered wood full of wolves.

Arya smiles a little bit at his approval, and then she puts her hands on the wolf's face, starting to whisper to her. Jaime can't hear what she's saying, and he almost grumbles that she dragged him out here in the snow for no _reason _, since he's obviously not a part of these stupid wolf negotiations that she seems to be holding. Which feels insane, to assume that she can _talk _to this wolf and have it understand, but he's seen stranger things from the Starks. And he remembers Robb's wolf with a shudder, how he always felt like it was doing his bidding in battle.

Except… maybe it's _not _for no reason. Jaime's the only one in the castle that has seen what these wolves can do on a battlefield, and Grey Wind was but _one _. It's unconventional, Arya's idea, but it's a good one.

Much better than her stupid plan to go to King's Landing again from earlier in the day. Thank the gods she listened to him then. And Jaime feels a little bit touched, that she wanted to listen to his opinion again now.

Even if he _does _start griping about his frozen feet the second Arya hugs the wolf goodbye and they head back towards the castle.

* * *

They talk battle strategies, on the way back. Arya tells him that the wolves won't go far, and that she knows Nymeria's _seen _dragons, that she'll know the cry of one is a signal to come, and with haste.

He tells her she's weird, and he expects teasing, but instead she admits that there was a while, when she was pursuing the people on her list, that she felt like she was more wolf than girl. _Lone _wolf, though, and seeing Nymeria again helped her to realize that where she really belonged with a pack.

Jaime's never had much of a pack, and he tells her as much. Arya shrugs as they walk through the gates of Winterfell again, saying, "You're part of our pack, now, old man."

She sticks her tongue out at him, killing the seriousness of the moment, but it still sticks with him even after she's flounced off towards her chambers.

_Part of the Stark pack _. Fuck's sake, if Tywin Lannister could only see his sons now.

He glances up at the ramparts, where two tall figures catch his eye. Sansa and Brienne are making evening rounds, but they seemed to have paused, looking at the spot where Arya has just left him.

Jaime's heart stutters in his chest when both women give him waves and approving smiles, and despite the cold, he feels surprisingly warm as he heads inside to take a late dinner.


	8. chapter 8

The next three days, time feels almost as frozen as the north itself. They know that the dragon queen will begin her approach soon — there's nowhere else for her to go, but Winterfell. She has scared six kingdoms into submission, but if one stands against her, rebellion will come. Maybe not this week or this day or this year, but it will come eventually, as more and more of the people of Westeros begin to look to the North for hope.

Tyrion tells him there was a time when Daenerys wanted to _inspire _hope, not quash it. Jaime's sure there was; he's watched people go from having the best of intentions to losing themselves to the worst of them, all to keep power. Aerys. _Cersei _. He's sorry for his brother, that he's having to feel this fall from grace so deeply.

He's sorrier for the people of King's Landing who died at her hands, though. And sorrier still for the rest of them, who could all be just as dead soon.

The waiting is interminable. They train, they prepare, they wonder at when the Dragon Queen will arrive.

After three days more of watching him train with Podrick and Arya, Brienne has finally deemed sparring with Jaime _herself _a worthy use of her time, and Sansa, Pod, and Arya herself have gathered to watch. Podrick looks wary, Sansa looks completely neutral about it, and Arya's got a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

Even Bronn and Tyrion watch, from a safer distance. Bronn's talking loudly, but Jaime tunes out his inevitably lewd comments. Tyrion is still more subdued than Jaime is used to as he finds his stance and prepares for the onslaught.

She'll beat him mercilessly, he knows it. He's still out of shape, and Jaime can only imagine the pent up anger Brienne must feel towards him. She's so level-headed all the time, so straight-faced that it drives him mad wondering if she's got any affection left for him at all, but he hopes to get a rise out of her as they spar. He hopes that she will show him at least a hint of what she is really feeling in the way she communicates best — with her sword.

And then Meera Reed wheels that omniscient fucker Bran Stark over to them, and he interrupts their moment by announcing airily, "They are on their way."

* * *

Things start to feel more real, then. Although they know they have a few weeks for the armies to march North still, the borrowed time they've been living on speeds up. People are doing the same things, going through the same motions of preparing, but there's a franticness to it now. Conversations appear more strained, movements look more rushed, everything is impossibly more tense.

The promised sparring match with Brienne is forgotten as Jaime finds himself in an unofficial huddle with the Starks, Brienne, and _Bronn _. Even he's not blathering on about castles anymore; even _he _is afraid enough to stay on task.

"The scorpions are ready, Your Grace," he says mockingly, and Sansa actually blushes. It's not her title, although Jaime senses she _wants _it to be. Not because she's power hungry like Daenerys, or Cersei, but because she's been taking care of the North when no one else has. She fought to get it back, tooth and nail, when Jon didn't care to; she guarded it when he was away, made preparations to protect it where she could. She _is _the North, she and Arya both, and Jaime hopes they survive this. Maybe Sansa Stark will live long enough to wear the crown that she deserves when all is said and done.

He doubts he'll be here to see it, though. He can't imagine himself cheating death again, although one look at Brienne, her brows furrowed in concentration, her large lips set in a firm line… If he thought she wanted it, still, wanted him to _stay _, he was sure he'd try his damndest to live this time, for her.

Like he should have done the last time.

It's not the moment to let his regrets haunt him, though. They're still loud in his head, after all this time. Cersei's voice has faded and faded in the past weeks, but his voice _hasn't _, telling him that he needs to make amends for what he's done before there's no time left, telling him that this is really it, this time.

"My Lady," Podrick corrects _for _Sansa, and Brienne gives him a jerky, approving nod as Jaime shifts his focus away from his lady knight and back towards the task at hand.

"And how many of them do we have?" Sansa inquires, all business, the color drained from her cheeks.

"Couple dozen, _my lady _. As many as we can fit around Winterfell. Learned our lesson about one not being enough the last time, when I had to save _this _fucker after he charged at a dragon on horseback," Bronn supplies, never missing a chance to make japes at Jaime's expense.

Arya stifles a laugh. She's never seemed as somber in the face of death as some; she even seems to welcome it, sometimes.

"One man, with one hand and one horse, trying to take down Drogon? How are you not dead seventeen times over?" she asks him incredulously, and Brienne looks aghast. He's never told this particular story; he tries to avoid tales of things he's done at Cersei's bidding, after all, and focus on the rare things he's actually done for himself.

_See? I do lots of stupid things, even if leaving you was the most idiotic of them all _, he tries to say with his eyes, but Brienne just returns her gaze towards her lady instead.

"Yes, well, most of us know firsthand just how quickly plans can go awry when she starts lighting things on _fire _. If she takes the scorpions out, we're going to need something more," Sansa insists, looking at them all very pointedly.

Jaime's gaze strays towards Arya, waiting to see if the little she-wolf will reveal what she'd shown him just a few days ago. That there was a pack of wolves just outside of Winterfell, large and ferocious and maybe incapable of lighting things on _fire _but not without their own strengths. She shakes her head, though, almost imperceptibly.

He thinks he understands. Sometimes, hope cannot come all at once. Sometimes, you need to save something for later, to give people hope when they feel they've lost it completely.

Besides. Arya, it seems, is not the only Stark with something up her sleeve. Sansa's been hard at work exploring every option, too, and she announces to them, "I've written to Tormund, beyond what's left of the wall. The Wildlings should be here to help us fight anyday now."

They're coming for Jon Snow, for the man who made it possible for them to come to the other side of the wall, the man who made sure they had a hope of winning the war against the others. But Jaime can't help but bristle at the memories of the large, unseemly ginger man, and his eyes trail to Brienne.

Fighting another Southern war can't be _all _he's coming here for, and he has to bite down on his tongue to keep from commenting on it right then and there in the war room.

* * *

Jealousy is an ugly and inconvenient emotion at any time, but it's especially useless in the face of imminent doom. He spars with Arya again that afternoon, while Bronn trains Brienne and Podrick on how to use the scorpions just in case, and he's told to stay behind because he can't do it with just the one hand.

He's distracted, though, wondering when the Wildlings will show up, wondering if Brienne will be more receptive to Tormund's advances now that she's _tried _love and had it foolishly leave her behind.

Because it was love, wasn't it? They'd never said as much, but he'd thought she'd felt the same way he had. Jaime had heard it in the way she'd defended him to Sansa. In the broken way she'd begged him to stay. He was near certain that Brienne of Tarth had loved him once, as he loved her now. He just didn't know if she loved him _still. _

"Pay attention, stupid!" Arya tells him as she gets another hit in on Jaime, but his heart's not in it and she knows it. She hits him again just because she can, then sighs. "Seriously, pay attention! You can't be more likeable than Tormund if you're _dead _."

Jaime rolls his eyes at her, but she _does _have a point. He could die any day now, and he keeps creating excuses not to at least _talk _to Brienne, and really lay all his cards on the table. She'd shot down his efforts at communication when he'd first arrived, of _course _she had, but she'd also told him she was glad he was still alive, and Jaime is so sure that she's softened towards him, of late.

He has to try. He has to try _now _, before gingers and Wildlings and dragons and Unsullied and Dothraki and fucking _Targaryens _can stop him from making sure she really, truly knows how much she matters to him. How much she's _always _mattered to him.

And then the damned horn is blowing, and Winterfell's gates are opening for the freefolk, and Jaime's missed his moment. _Again _.

* * *

Under normal circumstances, Jaime might be ashamed to realize that he doesn't know the names of _any _of the freefolk besides Tormund. But does he really need to? There's a good chance they'll all die soon, and only _one _of them is following Brienne around, leering at her, inserting himself into conversations whenever he can, loudly making comments about how he'd be happy to show her what a real man is like.

Jaime thinks some people find it _endearing _. It makes Jaime wish he still was wearing his golden hand so that he could _bitch slap _him with it.

It's not even just that he loves Brienne himself. If Jaime really thought Brienne had any interest in the wildling, he'd… try to be happy for her, he supposed. And he knows that Tormund does mean well; at least he _appreciates _her, even if he does it in ways that clearly make her uncomfortable.

He's just _so _bloody bad at reading the signals that he's receiving. And he keeps smirking at Jaime, too, now that he's back and sees the distance that has grown between he and Brienne.

Truthfully, it only makes _Jaime _more determined to hover around her, too. Tormund can't be the only one who gets to take pleasure just in being around her, and he supposes it's finally the kick he needs to stop giving her so much _damn _space to be mad at him.

He may _deserve _her ire, but he doesn't want it. He wants to be around her, especially if it means thwarting Tormund Giantsbane, so now Jaime _is _around her, almost everywhere she goes. At breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Out in the training yard. He even offers to walk her to her rooms at night, and she even lets him once, although she rushes into her room and shuts the door very definitively, as if she doesn't trust herself to be alone with him.

Brienne doesn't rebuff him. She almost seems to _like _the way he's doubled down on his intentions with her, at least so long as he keeps himself out of trouble.

He's Jaime Lannister, though. Keeping himself out of trouble has never been in the cards.

* * *

Jaime doesn't even remember precisely what started it. He'd been trailing Brienne around, and he'd even made her _laugh _. For a moment, he'd almost forgotten that there was war on the horizon. He'd almost forgotten the war _before _, the one where he'd ruined everything. It had felt just the same as before, him and her, easy camaraderie, a sense of _rightness _.

And then Tormund Giantsbane had come along.

Normally, Jaime was much better at simply _taking _insults. People had besmirched his honor time and time again; he'd let them, because it had been easier that way. But something about the way Tormund had spoken to him had made Jaime's blood boil. It's less what he says about Jaime _himself _, he thinks, and more the _way _he says it: with a surety that Jaime had never appreciated Brienne at all, as if the relationship they'd shared had been some meaningless thing and that he'd taken Brienne's maidenhead flippantly, as if it mattered not at all.

He just _doesn't _understand, Jaime remembers thinking. Jaime has to _make _him understand, how much it meant, how much it _still _means to him. He has to show Brienne that the things Tormund is saying aren't true.

And so Jaime shows him. With his left fist.

It's a pathetic excuse for a fight. Partially because this man sucks on giant tits, or fucks goats, or whatever other batshit, fearless things he's boasted about. Tormund Giantsbane seems more beast than man to him, and Jaime may not be afraid of beasts, but that doesn't mean he stands a chance against them.

The other reason it's a pathetic excuse for a fight is because Brienne intervenes _immediately _, breaking them up like they're petulant children and not grown men who both care for her.

Jaime only has a moment to feel smug about the fact that Brienne leaves Tormund standing there with a laughing Bronn and Arya as she drags _him _away.

Then they are alone, and she is glaring at him so ferociously that he almost thinks he'd rather face down Daenerys and her dragon right now than Brienne.

* * *

"Have you gone _mad _?" Brienne hisses at him, and he almost welcomes it. It may be _anger _, but it's a stronger reaction than he's gotten from her of late. At the very least, Jaime prefers it to the blank mask she'd so stoically worn when he'd first gotten here.

"I have indeed gone _mad _, but not the kind of mad you're accusing me of," Jaime replies instantly, wondering how she can even _question _him. Hadn't she heard Giantsbane just the same as he had? Acting like they were nothing, like _she _was nothing to him? How could she expect Jaime to just allow him to say those sorts of things without reacting.

"You certainly could have fooled me, Jaime!" she replies, and _okay _, he _does _prefer this, he definitely prefers this. Blank Mask Brienne never would have let herself get irritated to the point of dropping formalities; she would have called him _Ser _at least four times by now. Angry Brienne has simply called him _Jaime _, and even as he feels the fight rising up in him as he defends his decisions, he also feels a wave of relief.

_Jaime. My name is Jaime _. He'd told her that once, but _gods _, had it taken years and years to get her to actually call him that. And then, in one fell swoop, he'd _lost _that honor, lost the privilege of her dropping her guard and being comfortable around him.

"And what's so insane about it?" he demands, stepping closer to her. He misses the contact of her dragging him along; Jaime really _has _craved her for moons on end, and any kind of touch that she'll give him is one that he'll relish.

"You're a _guest _of the Lady of Winterfell! You can't go starting fights with other guests, all because… because…" Her rage subsides slightly then as she stammers, failing to put an explanation into words.

It's too much, too fast, and he shouldn't say it. He _shouldn't _, and he knows it, but it's not as if time is on their side. And it's not as if he's ever been much good at filtering himself, even when his emotions are running high.

"Because he doubted that I ever truly loved you?" Jaime asks her. His voice isn't as soft as it should be, for the first time he voices how he feels for her _aloud _in those terms. It's agitated, and desperate; she can't see it, but she _has _to. She has to realize that he's only angry because to him, what he'd had with Brienne was one of, if not _the _best, decision of his entire life, and Tormund Giantsbane had reduced it to a joke.

Why can't he ever do _anything _meaningful without people taking it in all the wrong ways? They're always finding the worst in him, doubting all the best parts, and _gods _, maybe they're right and maybe all there is to Jaime is the terribleness that he knows lives inside of him.

But if that's really true, why is he still here? Why have the gods kept him alive through impossible odds, if his good deeds and his right choices mean nothing in the end?

Brienne has not said anything. She is gaping at him, as if she can't believe he has finally said those words, and that he has said them like _this _. Jaime knows he's done it all wrong, but he doesn't know what she's thinking. Does she think that this is just some pissing contest with Tormund Giantsbane? Or does she still not trust Jaime enough to realize that what he'd felt for her was real, and that his feelings only run _deeper _than before?

"I love you," Jaime tries again, his voice soft like it should be this time. Earnest. "I came to Winterfell before because I loved you, and I was sick of parting from you. I left Winterfell because I loved another once, and because I did not think you could love a man who would abandon someone like so, someone who was with his child and had no one left to protect her. I did not think you _should _love a man who could do the things I have done. But time is short, and how I feel for you has not changed. It will _never _change, and the gods have kept me alive for some reason. Maybe that reason is to make sure that you, and every idiot like Tormund Giantsbane, know that my feelings were true. My feelings _are _true, Brienne."

His voice has risen in desperation as he speaks, because the blank look on her face is back. The one where she is void of emotion, and he cannot possibly read into what she is truly feeling. He's never wanted to know what she's thinking quite so badly as he does now, though. Jaime has laid himself bare before her, open and vulnerable and _achingly _honest, and she has the power to crush his heart in her hands.

Jaime supposes that would probably hurt far more than dying ever could.

"It is not for you to decide who I could or should love," Brienne replies, folding her arms over her chest. "And it is not for you to say things you don't truly mean, simply because you are jealous that someone else is paying attention to me."

"Things I don't _mean _? Brienne…" he pleads, but he'd been right the first time. He'd mucked it all up, and she wasn't _hearing _him. She wasn't ready to hear him yet, and her hand went to the hilt of Oathkeeper, a clear and obvious dismissal.

The only small consolation he gets as she turns on her heel and walks away is the fact that her eyes trail down to his hip, where Widow's Wail used to be. Like she is looking for her sword's twin. Like she _wants _to see a sign that they are two halves of a whole.

Or perhaps Jaime is imagining things. Seeing hope where there is none. If he is, he thinks he'd prefer to go on doing so. It would be better than letting her rejection seep into him and consume him.

* * *

He's distracted again, when he spars with Arya. But he's _talkative _and distracted, telling her about his outburst, confiding in her about Brienne's reaction.

"You're just as stupid as Gendry," Arya tells him, but her voice is tinged with sadness. Probably wondering where her Baratheon boy is, if she'll ever see him again.

"Or maybe I'm stupider. Maybe if I'd _proposed _to her, she might have gotten the picture," Jaime finds it in himself to tease. Arya rolls her eyes and looks down at his ankles, like she wants to kick them out from under him and trip him. He jumps back a step, refusing to give her the chance.

"She'd have just said no and then you'd be even mopier than you already are," Arya tells him matter-of-factly, and even though he knows she's right, it still stings a little, hearing it laid plain for him like that.

"Who's got the time to be mopey when there's an army marching our way?" Jaime replies, his face the picture of innocence.

Even as he says it, though, he can sense that something's wrong. It's as if the world has stilled; the air is still, too thick with terror and menace for anything to move.

Jaime casts his eyes toward the South instinctively, and he sees it, right as someone across the courtyard does as well.

They scream. Jaime simply grips his sword tighter as he makes out the shape of a large, black dragon in the distance.

The army may not be here yet, but Daenerys is.

"To the scorpions!" Brienne shouts from somewhere in the distance, as suddenly, everyone in Winterfell remembers how to move, just in time to scramble to their places and brace themselves for the dangerous dragon queen on the horizon.


	9. Chapter 9

Jaime remembers the way he felt the first time he spotted Drogon, soaring over top of his army on the Gold Road. A part of him had been terrified, then, but he thinks perhaps an even bigger part of him had felt awed.

There's no awe in him now. He'd seen what the dragons could do that day against an army, and worse, he'd seen what just _one _had done in King's Landing, to thousands of innocent lives.

Perhaps dragons had come back into the world to help with the threat of the dead beyond the wall, but the wights are gone now.

A burst of fire comes from Drogon's mouth, hot overhead as it burns only open air. A warning, that none of them should stand a chance against his power and might. Against _Daenery's _power and might, since she's the one who believes she's in charge of what this dragon does. Since she's a dragon herself, a Targaryen alone in the world.

Jaime thinks perhaps it's time for the dragons to be gone, too.

There's no time for thinking, though; now, there's only time for acting. As those capable of manning scorpions run to them atop the battlements, Jaime races upwards as well, gazing off in the direction Daenerys has appeared from, searching for an army that isn't there.

_She's come alone _, he thinks with just a flash of relief. It's soon gone, though.

Daenerys and Drogon alone is more than enough to ruin them all.

* * *

If Jaime were the sort of person to assume the best in people, he'd have hoped that Daenerys were only here as a scout, or even delivering a message to the people of Winterfell. Coming to try and resolve things peacefully, to absorb the North back into her kingdom without bloodshed.

He hasn't believed the best in people in a long time, though, and he certainly can't now, not after King's Landing surrender had meant nothing to the woman soaring overhead now.

Winterfell isn't King's Landing. Sansa Stark won't surrender, and her people aren't like those in the capitol. The Northmen are loyal and stubborn; if there were bells to ring in order to plead for their safety, they wouldn't do it. This time, they'd rather die than bow down to Daenerys Targaryen, and Jaime knows that if Daenerys is prepared, then that death could come soon.

_Too soon _. He'd thought he'd have more time. He'd thought that he'd be able to convince Brienne of his affections, he'd thought… he'd _hoped _…

The first scorpion bolt fires from somewhere Jaime doesn't see, and it pierces Drogon's wing, making the great black beast stutter in the air. He shrieks in pain, but veers off in another direction, to wherever Daenerys has steered him.

Bizarrely, then, Jaime thinks of Aerys. Aerys as he was at the end, all semblance of reason gone. All that he'd had left when Jaime had killed him was a surety in his own indestructibility, and it would seem that after all her pretty words to the contrary, Daenerys was more of the same.

She'd been taken by surprise by the scorpions at Dragonstone, the letter to Sansa had read, and yet she'd fallen into the same trap here, back in Winterfell. Her enemies had learned, but the Dragon Queen had not, and it couldn't be that easy. Surely she would retreat back to her army, would let her dragon heal, would not keep doggedly pursuing Winterfell here and now, on her own…

And yet, a shadow settled over Jaime as Drogon's hulking form turned back towards them, and another blast of fire ripped through the air.

Scorpion bolts flew, too, but none as true as the first that had caught her off guard. They missed the dragon in a way that his fire did not miss this time. Daenerys had settled upon them so fast that there had been no time to evacuate the castle, and he wondered for the safety of those inside as his eyes turned toward the smoldering flames.

The flames leaped off of an old tower, one that made Jaime's blood run cold. He remembered that tower; it was where this had all began, years and years ago when he'd pushed Brandon Stark from its window.

_Thanks the gods it's abandoned _, he thought to himself, followed by _what a sense of humor the gods have, if that tower is the last thing my eyes ever gaze upon _.

It isn't, though. Jaime's eyes cast upwards at the dragon again as another Scorpion bolt sinks into his underbelly, and while he roars with pain, a third one finally settles into his heart.

Jaime runs for cover as the dragon futilely beats its wings, and then plummets towards the ground.

* * *

Jaime has fought in a number of battles in his lifetime, and no two have ever been the same. Jaime doesn't know how to feel about this one, though. He should be relieved, that this one has been so short, that the only casualty seems to be a dragon and an abandoned tower.

Still, it feels like they've lost so much more. The North had never put much hope in Daenerys, he supposes, but _so _many people had, only for it to come to _this _. To her falling from the sky on the back of the last known dragon on Earth, the faith that so many had had in her destroyed.

There are more, though. Her army still awaits, and Jaime can't imagine that they'll give up now. If they still follow her after all she's done, then he supposes their faith in her will not be shattered no matter what. He shudders to think of it, of fighting to protect her, but then how can he judge, after all the horrible and wicked things he'd done for Cersei?

It unnerves him to think of it in this light. Jaime would rather _do _than think, so he starts moving, not quite sure where his feet are taking him.

"We did it, then? We killed the fucker?" Jaime hears Tormund Giantsbane, as loud and tawdry as ever, but around the courtyard, there aren't many other sounds. Most had fled inside to hide; those who did watch are mostly too stunned to make a noise. Jaime ignores the loud wildling and decides to go down to the other side of the wall, where Drogon had fallen, to see if the 'queen' had died with him or not.

He's not the only one who's had the idea; of course he's not. Ever dutiful, Brienne is there, Podrick by her side, and Arya has already come into the opening as well. They state in horror at Drogon's eyes, wide and blank in death, as Daenerys clutches to him, crying over his corpse, a wail almost more hideous than the one the dragon had made as he'd fallen coming from her.

He should hate her, he thinks. For burning the city after he'd given up his entire reputation to save it from her father, for the innocents she'd killed, for _his child _. He may not have loved his twin in the same way at the end, but she should have faced trial for her crimes instead of dying, scared and crushed by rubble.

And yet all Jaime feels, watching Daenerys with no fight left in her, is sad. She still has an army on the march, an army here to rescue her, but what more does she have to care for? She's lost everything on her quest for her destiny; an army cannot possibly fill the void left by everyone else she'd ever held dear. It reminds him too much of his twin, of the way he'd recognized less and less of her as she'd lost everything she'd wanted and everyone she'd loved.

Cersei had clung to her crown when she didn't have anything else anymore. Not her father's respect, not her brother's love, not her _children _. She'd clung to the one thing she'd thought she could control, and was Daenerys really all that different?

"Come with us, your Grace," said Brienne, the first one who dared interrupt the girl's grieving. Perhaps the only one among them willing to use a title she didn't deserve, as if to avoid drawing her ire.

Not that there was much ire left to be had. Daenerys was no threat to them like this, alone and so broken; still none of them quite knew what to do with her. She'd seemed so invincible when they'd met her, so sure of herself and her purpose, and now…

Jaime thought he heard Daenerys mumble something about how all she'd ever wanted was a better world for all of them as Podrick and Brienne hoisted her to her feet, and along with Arya, marched her into Winterfell, where Sansa's judgment would await.

* * *

Jaime watches as they walk away, and his legs ache to follow them. He wants to be where Brienne is always, but especially now, that they've had another near-brush with death that they've managed to survive.

_Too easy _, Jaime's mind tells him again. After all they have suffered, after all of the horrors they have seen, he cannot shake the feeling that the fighting isn't over. That taking Daenerys as a prisoner and killing the last dragon was too easy. He should count it as a blessing, but he can't shake the feeling of wrongness.

Instead, though, Jaime stays put and sees the people of Winterfell starting to cautiously peer out and see where the threat is gone. They're too far away to see their expressions, but Jaime hopes that they can enjoy this victory instead of feeling the same sort of apprehension that he does.

Even if there isn't anymore fighting, what even comes next? Jaime feels very old all of a sudden, like he has lived so long without ever truly seeing a good ruler. The closest he's felt to witnessing one has been Sansa Stark, these last weeks, but she won't want to leave her Northern keep to rule the six kingdoms.

If this is truly the end of Daenerys Targaryen's short reign, then what comes next?

The doors to the keep close behind Brienne and the rest, and Jaime turns back to the dragon. This is the closest up he's seen one, closer even than when he'd charged Drogon on the gold road, and he watches for a while, making sure that the breath truly has shuddered out of him.

The dragon is really gone, though, it seems. Today has happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, but it's the best possible outcome they could have hoped for. Minimal damage to a castle already in need of repairs, no one burned alive that they know of…

A small shadow appears beside him, and Jaime looks up to see Tyrion. He should have gone to find him the moment it ended, really; this cannot possibly be easy for his brother, watching the queen he had pledged himself to unravel at the seams. Watching the dragons he'd dreamed of since childhood all die, one by one.

Jaime moves, perhaps to offer his brother a hug, or some other form of comfort, but it's not Jaime that he reaches for. Instead, Tyrion crouches beside the dragon, putting a hand on its nose tentatively, gently. Jaime can see that there are tears in his eyes, and he can't even begin to guess what Tyrion is crying for.

For his queen, who had so clearly lost herself along the way? For the people she'd killed? For the loss of his dreams?

Either way, Jaime aches for him. The world hasn't been kind to either of the Lannister brothers, but Jaime knows that Tyrion has suffered, perhaps even more than he has. If not, then Tyrion's suffering has at least been far less his own doing than Jaime's.

He waits, letting Tyrion process things in whatever way he needs to, giving him time for it to sink in. It's only when the tears seem to have stopped and Tyrion pulls his hand away from the dead dragon that Jaime kneels down to wrap his arms around his brother, offering him what little comfort he can.

* * *

They stay like that in the cold for a while, Jaime waiting until there's some sort of sign from Tyrion before trying to get his brother to move. He's remarkably quiet, and it unsettles Jaime, but he knows it won't do to push him to talk about it now. Perhaps Tyrion won't want to talk about it _ever _.

Jaime knows from experience that sometimes there just _are _no words. He hadn't had them — after Aerys, after his hand, after Cersei had blown up the sept. Sometimes, even for someone as smart as his little brother, the right words just won't come.

There's an unspoken agreement as to where they're headed once they walk away from Drogon and the Starks' people approach the body, to dispose of it in whatever way they've surely already been instructed. Sansa Stark is the sort of ruler who seems to think of everything; Jaime has no doubt that she'll already have told them exactly what to do with the dragon, even with other pressing matters to attend to.

The hallway_ to _where they expect to find Sansa Stark feels longer than ever, but finally they are outside of the war room, and Jaime does the knocking for Tyrion. They are greeted by Brienne, who looks almost as if she has been expecting them. Indeed, she ushers them in, and perhaps it is Jaime's wishful thinking that her eyes linger on him, as if drinking in the sight of him still alive.

Gods know that's how _he _feels. Beyond lucky to still see her here, still alive, still as well as one can be.

The only other people in the room are Sansa and Arya, who both look to them expectantly. Tyrion opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it again. With the cold shoulder he's gotten from Sansa since his return, and the pain of knowing he'd failed so many so utterly, Jaime can't blame him for not knowing how to ask what they both want to know. Jaime's not sure how to ask delicately, either, so he thinks on it, not opening his mouth to speak just yet either.

Thankfully, Arya knows him well enough by now to offer the information without any fanfare.

"She _should _be executed for her crimes," Arya says, and Jaime knows he'd feel safer, if Daenerys and her Targaryen madness were no longer alive, either to do any harm herself or to have others rise up and cause harm _for _her.

"But she won't be, yet," Arya continues, and he thinks Tyrion sags with relief. It would be what she deserved, after the atrocities in the capitol, but… Jaime knows it is a hard thing, to say goodbye to someone you've seen at their best, even if they're now at their worst. "We need her, for information, for a fair trial.. For a bargaining chip."

Tyrion finally seems to have found his voice again, looking between both Stark girls as he says, "Her armies will go to war with you, either way. To avenge her, or to save her… more fighting is coming either way."

Sansa nods her head. "That's what we're expecting, yes. And we'll need to be as prepared as we can be. Which means, Lord Tyrion, I would appreciate it if you'd offer us any more insight. As one of Daenerys Targaryen's closest advisors, we expect there'll be _something _that you can offer us that might help."

Jaime hasn't seen Sansa defer to Tyrion's knowledge since before they'd all ridden South, and as miserable as Tyrion must be feeling, Jaime knows that this, at least, is a slight boost. The Lady of the North is willing to trust him again, and Jaime bows his head, thinking it best if he make his exist and let them speak in private.

"Lady Brienne, my sister can keep me quite safe. You are dismissed," Sansa says as she waves to a seat across her for Tyrion to take, and Jaime finds himself leaving the room side by side with Brienne.

* * *

Everything moved so quickly after it happened that it takes Jaime a moment to remember that the last conversation he'd had with Brienne before the dragon's arrival had gone horribly wrong. He'd been in a jealous fit about Tormund Giantsbane, it was true, but the words he'd said to Brienne were ones that needed to be said. _I love you _. Jaime could not have told her more plainly, even if she couldn't believe him, not yet.

They were words he felt, even as he'd ridden away from Winterfell and from her. They were words he'd felt even when he'd been with Cersei again, desperate to save their child and feeling like he deserved to leave the world the same as she did, after all the horrible things he'd done for his love of her.

Perhaps it was silly to think of nothing but love now, when they should be discussing the afternoon's events, or even what lay ahead of them. Jaime couldn't bring it in himself to do so, though. War and battle weren't the words he wanted to say to Brienne right now.

_I love you _were those words he wanted to utter again instead, no matter how ill-advised they might be.

"I love you. I do," he tells Brienne quietly, breaking up the sounds of their footsteps against the stone floor. "I know that nothing but time can make you believe me, but I fear time is not on our side, Ser Brienne, and I can't die without being certain that you know."

This time, Brienne doesn't fight him, or even blanch the way she had before. It's not as jarring, now that she's heard it before, but it seems to affect her all the same. Jaime thinks her cheeks might even have gone a bit pink, but it could be the fire lighting the hallways playing tricks on his eyes.

Brienne pulls her large bottom lip between her teeth, seeming to think before whatever she says next, and he dares to think that maybe she's going to say it back. Say that she loves him, too, or _had _loved him, at least, even if she cannot accept his feelings right now.

Instead, she says, "You won't be dying on my watch, Ser Jaime. In spite of everything, I am still glad to see you alive."

Brienne is clearly embarrassed that she has admitted to caring so much, but Jaime simply gawks at her, his eyes wide and his lips parted softly. Brienne uses his silence to bid him a good day, and veer down the hallway towards her quarters. Jaime doesn't let her abrupt exit get to him, though.

She may not have said _I love you _, but to Jaime, her words feel nearly as good.


End file.
